Metamorphosis

I chose “Metamorphosis” as the title of this album for several reasons. Having lived with these works for a quarter century, they have changed me, and I have changed along the way. During this project, my dear friend of thirty-three years, and former mentor, passed away. Ken and I spent most of my first master’s degree studying Bach manuscripts and first editions, and his influence is with me all the time. He always felt that the treatises and other primary sources were there to provide possibilities rather than to limit our scope. Our conversations went deep and wide and included a couple of extended journeys in Europe and the United States, studying manuscripts together.

I recorded these pieces during the Covid-19 pandemic, just weeks after my uncle in Italy passed away, and my aunt in Florida passed away, and while my dear friend in Colorado was preparing himself to pass onward from this life as well. Due to Coronavirus concerns, my partner in life and music–Mina, our chihuahua Apple, and I drove thirty hours each way from Colorado to Virginia and back, not stopping at restaurants nor hotels, to make this recording at the chapel of Sono Luminus Studios.

The Cello Suites themselves are each a guide to musical (and self) transformation. The map (the notation) isn’t detailed, thankfully. There’s room for a wide variety of interpretations, both in the sense of the macro—tempo and breadth, and at the micro—each melodic fragment, chord voicing, and musical gesture. These pieces have transformed in our cultural consciousness since the masterful performances of Pablo Casals in the 1930’s, the subsequent rise of the Early Music Movement in the last two or three decades of the 20th Century, and now, at the start of the third decade of the early 21st Century—a time when baroque performance practice is finding that all influences are valid, including contemporary ones. I think ultimately, “Metamorphosis” represents the freedom, the invitation we all have, to change, to transform, in our lives.

Zachary Carrettin - Viola