welcome

Welcome to my blog, I am nycellist, AKA Clay Ruede.

Given the title of this blog, it should come as little surprise that I am a cellist who lived and worked in New York City. One of the things that drew me to that city is that it had an amazing breadth of opportunities for a young musician to earn a living playing almost every sort of music extant in the culture of the time, and I was fortunate enough to participate in much of that grand cornucopia.

Over the last decade or so, other matters have occupied my time such that less of my energies have been focussed on performing, but I have nevertheless devoted some time to participate in musical projects of interest to me, as well as in a number of virtual gathering places for those of us with an interest in all things cello. Through these virtual communities, I found that there are certain recurring topics of interest that deserve to be addressed, so I decided to undertake this project with those things in mind. Initially this began by culling from my own posts concerning particular topics of discussion, and I hope to continue expanding upon these as time goes by with the goal to have as many interesting subjects as possible.

I began this BLOG in 2018, and in 2022-23, it was repeatedly hacked and restored and then hacked repeatedly again, finally resulting in the loss of all the work I had put into it. It was eventually stolen and hijacked to another country. Now it is more than midway through 2024, and I have managed to recreate most of the original BLOG, updating some things (many of the old links were broken or relocated, only one completely disappeared) and including a little new info. Sadly, all previous comments and related discussions were lost, but now I look to the future with a new webhost and my fingers crossed. Thanks goodness for the DARK WEB‘s Wayback Machine…

My interest here is really all things cello, but I realize that for the things I post to have some degree of legitimate authority, I will need to post some things within these topics that will reveal something of my experiences as a cellist and working musician. It is my intent to address that issue as obliquely as I am able, so as to illuminate rather than to distract from my purpose here.

I welcome participation by one and all within a basic framework of mutual respect and regard, even as there will likely be some differences of opinion and points of view. I expect that same regard of all who wish to participate.

I must point out that I have quoted from and referred to certain material that is the work of people other than myself. I have attempted to give credit to those whom I have quoted and to link to the information cited, but if I missed something, please understand that it is only an oversight.

As the purpose of this blog is to provide a place to find information for the use of students of the cello (and music) of all ages and backgrounds, these things are provided strictly in an educational context and not for profit or redistribution. Please respect the rights of others in all things. If you find some post of mine that is of particular interest to you and you wish to copy it to post elsewhere, please have the courtesy to cite where it came from.

Cheers!

Clay