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I’m listening to a recording of Yo Yo Ma playing Bach Cello Concertos, via my iPod and some new noise-cancelling ear pieces. well, I can’t say they’re totally noise cancelling, but they sure are noise reducing. I guess the more important thing is that the musical sound is wonderful and because of the reduction of other noise, I can hear things like bowing noises, scratchiness of bow meeting strings, finger action noise sometimes and – Yo Yo himself – breathing. Sometimes rhythmically, sometimes about gasping it seems. Since I’ve seen film of him playing some of this stuff, I know that playing the cello is no light weight activity. In fact, I’d say it’s downright physically demanding.

At first I wondered what some of the sounds were — and then I closed my eyes for a few minutes and just listened. Suddenly in my head was a wonderful picture of him playing this wonderful solo piece. Go for it Mr. Ma!