A Soloist Finds His Sound
Samuel is a cellist in the MYS Symphony Orchestra, a tenth grade homeschool student, and studies cello with Mina Fisher.
Samuel is rarely the loudest person in a room, especially having grown up in a family of nine children. But when he picks up the cello, his musical voice commands attention. From an early age, Samuel looked to his brother Matthew, ten years his senior, for inspiration. “I would often pretend to play cello with other objects, like long pieces of cardboard,” he recalls. His parents took notice of his enthusiasm and enrolled him in cello lessons at age five.
That instinct for imitation did not stop with his brother. Samuel fine-tunes his tonal concept and musical expression through careful listening and observation. When he began learning the Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto last April, he turned to YouTube, where one performance immediately stood out: Gautier Capuçon with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony. “He had a really centered sound—a clarity. You could hear all of the notes, and he had a lot of passion.” Capuçon’s recordings have since become Samuel’s first stop when learning new repertoire. Samuel’s teacher, Mina Fisher, encourages him to seek out multiple perspectives, including lessons with members of the Minnesota Orchestra. Last summer, Samuel was especially inspired by a lesson with principal cellist Anthony Ross, who taught him about unlocking a fuller, more soloistic tone.
Those insights proved especially valuable in Samuel’s preparation of the Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto No. 1. The first movement defies convention by skipping the typical orchestral introduction and launching straight into a fiery triplet swirl from the soloist. Samuel finds the opening thrilling, particularly as he embraces a bolder tone and a soloist’s mindset. With these qualities on full display, he emerged as the winner of the MYS Symphony Solo Competition in October. Behind the confidence and tonal brilliance, however, Samuel has a less glamorous formula for success. He prioritizes slow, deliberate practice to solidify difficult technical passages and reinforce memorization.
After taking his bows as soloist with the MYS Symphony Orchestra in February, Samuel will have more work ahead. He was also named the Grand Prize Winner of the Mary West Solo Competition and will perform the complete Saint-Saëns concerto—nearly twenty minutes of music—with the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra in April. “That’s definitely going to be a whole different thing,” he says. “I’ve never performed a whole concerto. I don’t think I’ve even played that long in a recital!” As Samuel approaches new musical challenges, including his aspirations to become a professional cellist, he will continue his methodical and insightful preparation, one note at a time.
