My wife and I invited musician Julia MacLaine to stay with us while she was apartment hunting in New York City. Her room was upstairs, right above the kitchen, and as Julia daily practiced on her cello, our home was transformed into an extension of the cello’s body. As she played, there were moments in our little house, with our little backyard in suburban New Jersey, when we were living in a Merchant-Ivory movie set in Tuscany. Julia was the perfect guest, even after practice.

The 1st portrait (above) is from a studio session with Julia in 2005, back when I still shot on film. If you must know: Plus-x with a Hasselblad and 120mm lens. I played with duotones in Photoshop for this version. The next picture (below) was taken when we first met in 2003, seconds after she got off the train at Watchung Plaza in Montclair, New Jersey; we hadn’t even said “hello”. She’d come from Canada to go to school in NYC. Was it Mannes? Who remembers that far back?

 A little background story about the background in the studio picture – it’s a painter’s drop cloth, one among several that I swapped with Peter Mulroe Painting Contractors for new ones after his outfit painted our house the year before.  They were fantastic, so random, like no professionally painted backgrounds I’d ever seen. They were begging to be rescued, and so I did. 

Since 2014 Ms. MacLaine is “Assistant Principal Cello of the National Arts Centre Orchestra ….. performs worldwide as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician in music ranging from classical to contemporary and from ‘world’ to her own arrangements and compositions.” 

Julia Maclaine’s website, visit, you must!

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