Here are some samples of how String Jams has been used in different musical settings including students who have just started playing cello, music teachers, and even orchestral. Enjoy these creative explorations and keep on jamming!
Visit https://www.bryanwilsoncello.com/summer for a special 25% discount on all digital books until July 5, 2023!
Unforgettable Moments at my First Cello Student Recital
I am overjoyed as I reflect on my first cello student recital! The performances were absolutely stunning, and the atmosphere was nothing short of magical. I couldn't be prouder of my incredible students!
But the surprises didn't stop there! My 93-year-old grandpa, my first musical inspiration, graced us with his presence. His support and presence filled my heart with warmth and gratitude because he inspired me to start playing music.
And that's not all! I had the incredible honor of playing alongside my very first music teacher, Larry Marino. It was a nostalgic and profound experience to share the stage with someone who ignited my love for music.
The highlight of the evening was when all my students came together to perform the song, Orange County, from my String Jams book. Everyone took a solo and we jammed out together for the first time ever!
I want to express my deepest gratitude to everyone who attended and supported our recital. Thank you to my students who continue to inspire me everyday and to their wonderfully supportive parents, who have entrusted me to help them on their musical journey. Many thanks to Center for Modern Dance Education (CMDE) for the beautiful space for my students! Also, amazing filming done by Kan Hsiao. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
This recital marked a milestone in my journey as a teacher, and I am beyond excited for the musical adventures that lie ahead. Here's to many more beautiful moments of inspiration, growth, and unity through music!
I'm really happy to share a very positive review of my String Jams books by the esteemed American String Teachers Association.
I'm proud of these books and I'm glad that more string teachers will be introduced to them! Many thanks to ASTA for the kind review and I look forward to teaching my workshop at the national conference in Atlanta in March!
Last week, the Paramus Community Orchestra premiered my piece, Kallaloo, at their final concert of the season.
It was really cool to share this piece and introduce the students and teachers in the orchestra to improvisation.
Enjoy the relaxed vibe of the song and if you want to have it for your string orchestra to jam on, you can purchase the sheet music at https://www.bryanwilsoncello.com/sheetmusic/kallaloo
String Jams Chop Contest:
Okay so here's the contest!
Take any piece from either of my String Jams books and add some chopping to it.
Be creative! It could be a different version of the melody with some chops, chops during the solo section, or anything you can think of!
Record a video of yourself playing and upload it to Facebook and/or Instagram with the hashtag #stringjams
You can upload it to YouTube if that's easier for you and send me an email with the link.
First Prize: Two Free 45 minute lessons plus the sheet music/backing tracks to my first album, Oso Perezoso.
Second Prize: One Free 45 minute lesson and sheet music/backing tracks to Ice-9 and Swins
Third Prize: Sheet music/backing tracks to Ice-9 and Swins
Contest ends at 11:59 EST on May 7th, 2021.
After the contest ends, I'll send an email with a link to all the submissions and you can vote for your favorite (it could be yourself).
One of my all time favorite people from college, the amazingly talented pianist and composer, West Troiano, wrote a hauntingly beautiful piece for me. I had such a great time helping bring his composition to life (not that it was that hard to do since it's such a cool piece).
Check out this amazing sloth cover art done by the superbly talented artist and architect, Zach Veach (https://zacharyveach.com).
I am really proud to announce the launch of TWO new books that I wrote on March 2nd, 2020: Advanced String Jams and Beginner String Jams. It took me 9 years to publish another book after Cello Chords and let me tell you, it might take me another 9 to do the next one. It’s a LOTTTTTTT of work, but I am very happy I did it.
So what exactly are these books?
Both String Jams books are an opportunity for violinists, violists, and cellists to go beyond classical music and start exploring contemporary genres! For Advanced String Jams, I composed 16 original songs in 15 genres including Hip-Hop, Hard Rock, EDM, Pop Rock, Latin, Synthpop, Film Score, Indian, and more! The book includes sheet music and high quality backing tracks for every song. It’s like you’re playing with your own band every time. This book is recommended for players with at least 5 to 6 years of experience on their instrument.
Even better is that each song has a space for improvisation as well. No experience is necessary with improvisation, I break down how to start going about it and provide cheat sheets in terms of scales and chords for every track. I want students to start diving into creating their own solos, songs, tracks, symphonies, whatever! Just get creative with it. I feel improvisation is a necessary and key element that is lacking in mainstream string education.
Every song has practice backing tracks as well at slow, medium, and performance tempo. Plus there is an improvisation loop track to practice jamming just on the improv section. Finally, I recorded myself playing all the melodies so you have the full tracks as a reference. But I really want students to explore and make these songs their own.
Beginner String Jams is comprised of 8 simplified songs from Advanced String Jams. The keys and melodies are easier, the range of notes is smaller, there are minimal extensions, the improvisation sections only use one scale, and there's no shifting! Beginner String Jams features backing tracks that come in Very Slow, Slow, Medium, and Performance Tempo, so you can practice with the backing track from the very beginning! This book is recommended for students with at least 2 to 3 years of experience on their instrument and again, no improvisation experience is necessary.
I really can’t express how excited I am about these books (also how much work they were to produce, haha). If you want to preorder the books, you can get over a 20% discount before March 2nd, 2020. You can do so here: http://www.bryanwilsoncello.com/stringjams
Thank you all for your support! I am sure you are going to find this book not only super fun, but also really educational.
I am humbled and honored to have two of my tracks from, "Inner Peace" featured in this wonderful video promoting the 25th anniversary of the International Shri Krishna Puja to be held at Nirmal Nagari, Canajoharie, NY. The music fits perfectly with the bucolic scenery and it's a fantastic event. I hope you enjoy the video, music, and good vibrations!
Today I had a really transformative experience. My wife, Bùi Tuyết Minh, is the founder of Vietnam Dance Movement Therapy and helped to lead a workshop at the American Center in Hanoi for Vietnamese veterans who are suffering from cancer.
When I first heard that she was doing this workshop and that I would be lending musical accompaniment, I was intrigued, albeit a little apprehensive. I have collaborated so many times with my wife in tons of workshops, but this one in particular stood out to me. It seemed heavy and dark, but very important.
Here’s me, some American kid who had an easy life and grew up with very little connection to Vietnam or the Vietnam War. I knew my grandparents, father, and mother were against the war back in the day and that my dad once got arrested for throwing snowballs at cops at an antiwar protest while he was in college. The legend is that the cops shaved his head in jail and it never grew back.
Now my connection to Vietnam is much, much stronger as my wife is Vietnamese and daughter is both Vietnamese and American. I’ve lived in Vietnam for almost a year now and have learned about the rich cultural heritage of this country. In the USA, all I really knew of Vietnam was the war: seeing movies and reading books all from the American perspective. Though the Vietnam War was certainly not the defining factor of people and culture in Vietnam, it definitely was an extremely significant and traumatic event that has shaped lives of everyone in this country in some way.
The workshop began with the veterans and their wives talking about how they were affected by the war: what they did before, during, and after. Some were teachers, some were doctors, all called to fight and all profoundly affected by their time as soldiers. All of the conversation was in Vietnamese and though my Vietnamese has gotten better over the last year, I didn’t understand most of the words they were saying. Honestly, I didn’t really need to understand the words as I could understand the feeling, emotion, and pain in how they were talking.
It’s funny, as someone who plays a very emotionally charged instrument and likes it for that fact, I really don’t like to talk about how I feel. After everyone had told their story at the beginning, Minh asked me if I wanted to say something. I really didn’t want to talk. I can be a good speaker and writer if I want to, but I just felt like it was so much easier in this situation to say what I wanted to say by playing. I played, Tinh Cha, a song for Vietnamese fathers and Minh began to facilitate the movements of the workshop.
You could see on their faces that the combination of the music and movement was really affecting them. It was quite powerful. Here was this music from their past, songs that they know and loved, recontextualized through the lens of some American man playing the cello.
This might sound pretentious, but despite the songs being familiar, I think what they were responding to is the intention and energy that I was giving the music. What I was trying to convey was a sense of healing, empathy, and compassion through my playing. I was trying in some ways to apologize for the stupid and often cruel things that countries do in the name of war, when at the end of the day, no matter what side you’re on, you’re still humans. No matter what side you are on when you see the horrors of war you are still a human being and you are going to be profoundly affected by this experience. What really separates you from the enemy? A uniform? A language?
It’s like that Thomas Hardy poem, “The Man He Killed.” It’s from the point of view of a soldier who killed an “enemy soldier,” and about how perhaps if they had met under different circumstances, they would have been friends. They would have had a drink at a bar and laughed. People aren’t governments. Governments get people involved in these conflicts, but it’s the people who suffer.
As I continued to play I could see the healing quality of what Minh and I were doing. I have to be honest, most times when I’m playing, I play for myself. The fact that people are sometimes deeply affected by my playing isn’t really my goal. I play because I enjoy playing and everything else that happens as a result is nice, but not my focus.
This was different. I wanted the audience to be touched in a positive way. I wanted them to see that though they may have seen some terrible things and now they are fighting for their lives from diseases inflicted by chemicals from the war, that every darkness has a light. Forty-four years after the end of the war I bet these men were not expecting to be at the American Center in Hanoi being played Vietnamese songs by an American cellist and being led in a dance workshop by his Vietnamese wife.
At the end of the session, the soldiers and their wives were very thankful for providing the workshop. I was thankful to them for giving me a chance and for sharing their deeply personal stories with us. I know I grew as a person, an artist, and human being. I hope I helped to give them some sort of relief and peace.
In an endlessly complicated and often scary world, never underestimate the healing power of music, dance, and the human connection. These are some of the few things that really matter in this world.
On January 26, 2018 we at Bryan Wilson Cello Studio welcomed Bryan Wilson and Bui Tuyet Minh's beautiful daughter, Kaia Minh Wilson, into the world!
Kaia means Ocean, Earth, and Nothing is impossible. Minh means Light in Vietnamese. Kaia Minh means Ocean of Light.
She is the first child of cellist/composer, Bryan Charles Wilson. He began crafting songs for his daughter to listen to as soon as he knew his wife, Minh, was pregnant. It was a spiritual journey for Bryan as a composer, cellist, and father-to-be as he supported Minh through her pregnancy.
The album combines cello, vocals, and atmospheric synthesizers that help put his daughter in a state of sonic bliss. The musical textures are soft and lush, bathing listeners in a cocoon of warm harmonies and joyous melodies. The music is perfect for relaxation as well as matching the many different moods of a child.
We are very excited to share these songs with you and hope you and your children are transported to a state of enlightened tranquility when listening to this music.
Much love to you all and here's to hoping that Kaia likes the cello!