We like to begin Christmas morning with Christmas music. At Lake Tahoe, we listen to our vintage record collection, with albums from Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Etta James and others.
This morning, in Nevada City, I turned to classical music, piped into the living room on the Spotify digital music service and the Amazon Echo (outfitted with Bose speakers).
In honor of our son, I choose the Amit Peled Cello Gang from Johns Hopkins University (JHU), where he will join the Class of 2024 next fall as a biomedical engineering major. In addition, Hanukkah overlaps with Christmas this year, and Amit is an Israeli-American musician.
We’ve heard Amit in person, thanks to InConcert Sierra in Grass Valley, and we’ve written about him in our Sierra FoodWineArt magazine. We thoroughly enjoy Amit’s music, and we look forward to hearing him at JHU when we visit our son on the East Coast during the next four years.
“Israeli-American cellist, conductor, and pedagogue Amit Peled is acclaimed worldwide as one of the most exciting and virtuosic instrumentalists on the concert stage today,” as his bio reads.
“The Amit Peled Cello Gang is composed of students from Peled’s studio at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where he has taught since 2003,” observes the group’s website. “The students range in age from undergraduate freshmen to second-year master’s students, and the group comes together often to perform works written or arranged for cello ensemble.
“This unique ensemble has performed recently for the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, the Society of Four Arts in Palm Beach, the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, as a resident ensemble in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and all across Maryland, the gang’s home state. The first Cello Gang CD under the CTM Classics.”
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all of our friends!
Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report 
Lovely! Thank you.
Sent from my iPad
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