TO the rigors of the performing life – too much travel, too little sleep – add homework.
Alisa Weilerstein does. The 19-year-old cellist played 42 concerts last year, also her freshman year at Columbia. Critics raved over her “spine-tingling perfection” and “ferocious passion” – but that didn’t exempt her from term papers.
“Thank God for laptops,” she laughs. “I wrote about Dante’s ‘Inferno’ on the plane.”
She performs tomorrow at Caramoor, playing Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1. She’s practiced it often in her dorm room – just across the hall from Julia Stiles.
“She’s really a very sweet person,” Weilerstein said. “She said she liked hearing me practice while she was studying. I don’t know whether she was saying that to be nice.”
Weilerstein plays with the same fierce joy and abandon as the late Jacqueline DuPre, the brilliant cellist cut down by multiple sclerosis. Weilerstein adored her.
“The cello really seemed a part of her, and she did everything with such love and gusto,” she says. “I think that’s the only way to live.”
Alisa Weilerstein playstomorrow at 8:30 p.m. atCaramoor. For tickets, $15to $55, call (914) 232-1252.