Well, we had our first rehearsal today for the next orchestra concert. I must say, after the intensity of the last performance, I was still on fire for this rehearsal. However, it's Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 2, and we're looking at the possibility of scaling down our equipment to make it sound lighter. We'll see about that...
The concert was a huge success! Of course, there are always things that you wish could have gone better, but the reaction from the audience was one of great appreciation and support! Gene said that it was possibly one of the best orchestra concerts he had heard at the university since he was hired 30 years ago! Many were impressed, and we received a good number of compliments on our hard work. Sibelius No. 2 is certainly an endurance symphony... at least the way we did it. Not in terms of tempos, or the length overall, but the drive and intensity through the whole work really take it out of you. And then the Finale... wow, I don't think I've ever played that loud in my life!
Funny thing about playing loud... sometimes it's never loud enough. As I've said, I'm pretty sure I would have been putting my supper through my trombone if I was playing any louder at then end of the Sibelius on Friday night. However, everyone we talked to after the concert said that the brass were in a great balance to the rest of the orchestra. Didn't drown out a thing. I could have sworn the back desk viola (who I can hit with my slide if I reach out a little from my chair) was going to go deaf, or at least experience some sort of temporary hearing loss.
To add insult to injury, the brass got special mention by one of the critics who reviewed the performance. After complimenting the orchestra and the performance overall, the critic mentions the brass in passing, with the comment "tastefully restrained." I know for a fact that we were nowhere near restrained, and the volume on stage certainly not tasteful. The whole brass section broke down in laughter when this was read to us today. Just goes to show, you might be blowing your brains out in volume, but what the audience hears is completely different from what you hear on stage. Upon further investigation, even with newly installed seats, the hall we play in still sucks up the low brass sound, but at least the woodwinds now can be heard. One of the profs mentioned it was like having an oboe sitting in your lap. Cute... is it house trained?
Anyways, I've got a recording on the way, so I'll try and get those up sometime. If you want to read the whole review, it's posted here.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Data Storage
I've started a huge project. I'm going to convert all of my music into digital files (read: mp3s) and store them on some sort of portable hard drive. I've come to realize that as my degree moves onwards, I'm collecting CDs at an insane pace. The little bookshelf that Megan sent with me to Victoria is already double stacked, and there are even more CDs in my storage locker. I figure I'll actually save money in blank CDs and cases this way.
However, the problem lies in naming all the files. Since I'm a bit type-A with this sort of stuff, I want a format for the naming of song title, artist, composer, album and so on. That in itself isn't a problem, since I've already got a system in place for that. The problem is the CDDB that iTunes uses to look up CD track names and information. It's all programmed by random monkeys, and the classical music data has no consistant naming scheme. Even tracks on the same albums are all screwy. So I can't simply look everything up that way, I have to go in and manually program all the track information. This may not seem like a big deal, but we're talking about close to 30,000 tracks here. I've got over 130 gigs of music, and it's going to need to be organized in some fashion so that I can actually find stuff when I need it.
So I've been slowly doing that this weekend. Unfortunately I don't have a portable hard drive yet, so I've been just dumping in CDs and renaming then in my iTunes library. I'll have to go back and rip them later when I have space. Tim, the trumpet player in my quintet, has a drive that I like, and he might be interested in selling. It's a 400 gig Western Digital My Book; it runs quiet, seems to have a fairly fast access time, and has both USB 2.0 and Firewire ports, which means if I ever need to, I can get a second one and daisy chain them together. I don't really have the money right now anyways, but he's not planning on selling it until he gets a new computer in the new year, so there's no rush. Just nice to plan out...
Got my recital program finalized this week. Still working on a date change, however. There have been some cancellations, so I might be able to shuffle some people around to make it work. Things like this seem to go at a snail's pace around here.
Also been trying to figure out what I'm going to do this summer musically. I'm going to audition for the NYO again, but there are a few other summer orchestras that I'm interested in. There is the Symphony Academy of the Pacific, which is in Powell River, BC. Sounds like it's about the same as NYO without the touring across Canada, but there seems to be less scholarships floating around for that one. I'm also looking at auditioning for the Aspen Music Festival, in Colorado. The trumpet prof here, Lou Ranger, teaches at the festival every year, and mentioned that I should try for the audition this year. That'll be interesting, since my bass trombone hero, John Rojak, is also there every year. That's an expensive one, however, and I can't seem to decipher how the scholarships/fellowships work on their website. There is also the Music Academy of the West, which is in Santa Barbara, California. That one is very much like the NYO as well, but on a beach. I'm very interested in this one, since it is all paid for if you get in. Not only that, but you can send in taped auditions, so I can do as many takes as necessary to get the best recording!
Other than that, not much new around here. Been doing lots of playing, I'm subbing for a local orchestra tomorrow in one of their dress rehearsals. Nothing too fancy, but I've moved up the sub list around here, so that's good to know. The UVic orchestra has a concert this coming Friday, which should be great. The Sibelius Symphony No. 2 is coming along well, and I don't have to count too many rests through it, so that helps keep me interested. I'll hopefully have a recording of it shortly after the concert, and I'll see if I can put it up for download.
However, the problem lies in naming all the files. Since I'm a bit type-A with this sort of stuff, I want a format for the naming of song title, artist, composer, album and so on. That in itself isn't a problem, since I've already got a system in place for that. The problem is the CDDB that iTunes uses to look up CD track names and information. It's all programmed by random monkeys, and the classical music data has no consistant naming scheme. Even tracks on the same albums are all screwy. So I can't simply look everything up that way, I have to go in and manually program all the track information. This may not seem like a big deal, but we're talking about close to 30,000 tracks here. I've got over 130 gigs of music, and it's going to need to be organized in some fashion so that I can actually find stuff when I need it.
So I've been slowly doing that this weekend. Unfortunately I don't have a portable hard drive yet, so I've been just dumping in CDs and renaming then in my iTunes library. I'll have to go back and rip them later when I have space. Tim, the trumpet player in my quintet, has a drive that I like, and he might be interested in selling. It's a 400 gig Western Digital My Book; it runs quiet, seems to have a fairly fast access time, and has both USB 2.0 and Firewire ports, which means if I ever need to, I can get a second one and daisy chain them together. I don't really have the money right now anyways, but he's not planning on selling it until he gets a new computer in the new year, so there's no rush. Just nice to plan out...
Got my recital program finalized this week. Still working on a date change, however. There have been some cancellations, so I might be able to shuffle some people around to make it work. Things like this seem to go at a snail's pace around here.
Also been trying to figure out what I'm going to do this summer musically. I'm going to audition for the NYO again, but there are a few other summer orchestras that I'm interested in. There is the Symphony Academy of the Pacific, which is in Powell River, BC. Sounds like it's about the same as NYO without the touring across Canada, but there seems to be less scholarships floating around for that one. I'm also looking at auditioning for the Aspen Music Festival, in Colorado. The trumpet prof here, Lou Ranger, teaches at the festival every year, and mentioned that I should try for the audition this year. That'll be interesting, since my bass trombone hero, John Rojak, is also there every year. That's an expensive one, however, and I can't seem to decipher how the scholarships/fellowships work on their website. There is also the Music Academy of the West, which is in Santa Barbara, California. That one is very much like the NYO as well, but on a beach. I'm very interested in this one, since it is all paid for if you get in. Not only that, but you can send in taped auditions, so I can do as many takes as necessary to get the best recording!
Other than that, not much new around here. Been doing lots of playing, I'm subbing for a local orchestra tomorrow in one of their dress rehearsals. Nothing too fancy, but I've moved up the sub list around here, so that's good to know. The UVic orchestra has a concert this coming Friday, which should be great. The Sibelius Symphony No. 2 is coming along well, and I don't have to count too many rests through it, so that helps keep me interested. I'll hopefully have a recording of it shortly after the concert, and I'll see if I can put it up for download.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Long Weekend, Long Post
Well... I guess it's been over a month since I've blogged about something. Lots has been happening, but I guess I just have not been able to work up the patience to sit down and type it all out. However, since it's the long turkey weekend, and I'm not going anywhere, I can sit down and get it all out!
Alright, where to start... well, after the zipline tour, I returned to Victoria to start classes. I remembered from last year to not expect much in the way of organization, since Victoria is the king of relaxed atmospheres. I promised myself I would not be frustrated by the lack of any sort of schedule to make my life easier. After about 2 days I wanted to shoot the administration, experiencing the same levels of frustration and lack to continuity that I felt in my first week of UVIC. Gene wasn't a problem, he had just got back from Detroit, I knew he would be busy, but there was no way for me to find out things like: What are my TA responsibilities, when are rehearsals for brass chamber groups, how many groups will I be teaching, when are the auditions for the orchestra, and many more... *sigh*
Anyways, I didn't fall into a real schedule until last week, but things started to come together shortly after Gene got out of vacation mode. Auditions were held at the end of the first week, so once again I began to polish my "Ride of the Valkyries" excerpt (since I wasn't allowed to play it at home - ask Megs about that one...) and the Beethoven Symphony 9 excerpt that Gene had provided to all the low brass students. Ironically, this year, I found myself coaching a few different people through the excerpts, helping with style and rhythm and context, as opposed to last year when people hid outside my practice room door and listened (much like I guess I did when I was in my undergrad at U of L). It made me feel like I've been learning about the orchestral genre, since that was one area that I felt that I was lacking, since there is little to no opportunity to experience that in Lethbridge.
So, the auditions went well, and although my position in the orchestra this season was already assured, I feel I did well on the excerpts. There were some things I was not happy about, such as not having the sound quality that I usually have, but I was still coming out of the summer practice routine, and that has fixed itself. Gene was happy with the other areas that I've been working on in the orchestral excerpt process, such as time, rhythm and style. I guess it's hard to teach style without listening, but I've noticed that even at UVIC, where there is an insane amount of recordings available (which I "borrow" regularly) people do not take advantage of them to learn the works, and how the excerpt fits in the context of the entire piece. Not only that, they are upset and confused when they are told it doesn't sound like that when they play it. Anyway, this created a little revelation for me: It's the little things that make the musician. You can play the notes, but if you can't put together the little things that the composer wrote in, what's the point? Accents, phrasing, style, tempo, they're all there for a reason. If you can co-ordinate them all, that makes the whole thing work together.
Hmm... what happened next? Oh yeah, orchestra. So the orchestra is going to be the best at UVIC than it has been for the past several years, apparently. The string players that were holding the group back, via attitude or ability, have all graduated, and the new ones are all keeners, so they seem to be practicing quite a bit. Not only that, the brass section is hardcore solid! We have grad students in each area (horn, trumpet, trombone) and the section members are all great players! The tuba player is a prodigy that Gene has been teaching since he was in junior high, and he's been to Domain Forget twice already, and studied with Roger Bobo! Insanely good tuba player! I think he's mildly autistic (is that possible?) but that's another story. Anyway, point is, strong sections in the back. Tim, Jim and I were pretty excited, since we're planning on not holding back the sound this season. I will be making some poor viola player deaf by the end of the year! For the first concert coming up at the end of this month, we're performing Sibelius' Symphony No. 2, and Beethoven's Overture to Leonore, as well as a Haydn Symphony (100, the Military, I think) but there is no low brass for that. The Sibelius is awesome! Get a recording and listen to that one! I'll post it up after the concert so you can hear, certainly a great, powerful work!
Speaking of Tim, Jim and I, our quintet is back together again this season. We were happy to hear that we were all posted to the same group again, with some new additions. We gained a grad student horn player named Jacob, who is from the States. When I first met him, we had a G.W. Bush bashing session, so I knew we would get along fine. We also got a new trumpet player to replace our Cuban, Javier, who graduated and now runs a group on a cruise ship. Justin is a 3rd year, who practices more than I do (which is scary...) and he is really keen on the brass quintet realm. He's got the same problem (addiction) as I did in my undergrad: Buy lots of music! Anyways, we're gonna tackle some hard works this semester, starting with the Previn "4 Outings for Brass". We'll see where we go from there, but we're looking at performing Eric Ewazen's Concerto for Brass Quintet, "Shadowcatcher". We just have to suck up to Eric and see if we can score a piano reduction, since it's for quintet and Wind Orchestra! Hopefully, we'll score some free parts!
Rob has a buddy that he worked with at Nerd Corps who is a blues guitar player. Real nice guy, and a great musician. However, Podo was leaving to go back to Montreal. He and I have been saying for a while that we should do a gig together, so since he was leaving, we planned on out. It was a great time! Played in a small cafe in downtown Vancouver, and had a huge crowd! Certainly was a different experience! The sound was definitely something you don't think about hearing in that style. He plays a steel guitar, which has the characteristic blues sound that you hear in things like, say, Muddy Waters. Couple that with a trombone player doing fills and solos, and you've got some original material right there. I think we had some people confused for a while, but they got into it, and by the end of the night, were buying us drinks and having the bartender bring them up on stage. Since most of the crowd was people Rob and Podo know from work, we were shocked as the night went on to see people we didn't recognize coming up and taking pictures and videos of us up on stage! Guess they could hear us outside or something, and being downtown, you get one hell of a walk-in crowd. Rob videoed the whole thing, and I'm sure he's gonna cut a film of it, so when it's posted, I'll set up a link to his site.
I also decided to audition for an open position for the Vancouver Island Symphony. They are much like the LSO, except you get paid about 2 grand for the season. They were looking for an entire new trombone section, and Jim and I had both decided to go out for the audition. After I requested the audition list, I was a little concerned, as they were looking for us to play some of the hardest passages in bass 'bone excerpts! Some of it was from my NYO audition last year, so I figured it would be good for me to work them up. Jim's excerpts were killer, and it seemed like they were eliminating people from auditioning just by posting up an almost impossible list to play. These were all works that this group will not be performing anytime soon (Mahler 3, for instance) but they were on the list anyways. Turns out, I wasn't the only bass trombone auditioning. Scott, the teacher at UVIC for the undergrads, was also going out for the spot. He played with the Victoria Symphony last season, and went to the U of T, and studied with many, many great trombone players, including Alain Trudel. Scott is very good, but a very nice guy, and great to play with. He is my age, so we get along well, and I've been picking his brain, since he has more orchestral experience than I do. Anyways, I was borrowing a car to drive up to Nanaimo for the audition, and Scott needed a life, so he came with Jim and I. We were joking all the way up that I could just leave him on the side of the road, and the job was mine!
Anyways, I'd worked hard on the excerpts, and when I'm on my game, I can play them just as well as Scott, so I figured I had a chance, or at least was gonna give him a run for the money. However, it only took me about a minute and a half to blow it. We were asked to perform a solo work before the excerpts, and during mine, I literally went blank in the head. I knew my little etude forwards and back, but it was like a pitch black room in my head. I had to stop playing and pick it up again. That shook me up for the rest of the etude, and it was not solid as I hoped. Funny enough, the excerpts went great after that, but the damage was done, and they stopped me before could play them all. Scott didn't get to hear my screw up, so when I came out of the room, he said that I'd played some of the excerpts better than he did! That was nice to hear, but I explained what happened, and he laughed and said he did that too on his first few auditions. We're going to work on the audition process during our masterclasses, as I want to win the position with the NYO this season. There is something different about the nerves during an audition. It's not like a solo, or a recital, but they are still there. You know people are listening, but you can't seem them behind the screen, and you know it all rests on you playing something, that the last X number of people have played, perfectly. No room for interpretation, no room for original musicality. All I can say is that there is an art to auditions, and it's nothing like playing in the orchestra for real, nor is it like performing for a recital. It is something entirely different.
I've got all of my pieces picked out for my recital in March (either 5th, or 7th, still fighting that one out...). I'm still short about 10 minutes, but I'm trying to find a french tuba piece to work on. I've got a good spread of works on the program, but something in that light, rhythmic french style would fit in well. Otherwise, we've got some Spanish themed works, and Ewazen trombone octet, an unaccompanied work for good luck, a Sonatina that I really enjoy, and a duet with Jim that Ian McDougall wrote a few years back. That'll be fun, since we get to work directly with Ian on the thing, so we'll have it down! I've already got the Sonatina worked almost up to performance, and I'll probably play the first movement in a noon hour sometime this month. Depends on the accompanist situation. Hopefully this year I won't get screwed on that front. If nothing else, I know I can hire Charlotte again, but I don't want to have to spend too much money on that again. Especially since the damn pianists are assigned to us for a grade!
I seem to be the sub of choice as of late. I was out to the Greater Victoria Youth Orchestra (GVYO) yesterday morning to play. Actually kind of fun, as they are playing one of the excerpts that I worked up for the auditions the week before, the Berlioz Hungarian March. Lots of fun, but they were going slower than I expected. Man, that shit is harder to play slow! They played it for almost an hour, though, so I got to do it over and over again! There is nothing like actually playing something like that with a group to really understand how to play it. The conductor for the GVYO is also the conductor for the UVIC Orchestra, so I think I got to make a good impression on him. Not only was I prepared to play the work, but I think he was getting what he wanted from us where I was there, so he kept looking at me when the excerpt came up, smiling and giving my the huge Tom-like cue!
Today I'm recovering from whatever illness has been traveling around the music building. Started to get sick on Friday, but there was the concerto concert that night, and I wasn't going to miss that. The girl that won, with the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto, kicked some serious ass. I don't have any issue losing the competition to her, she played extremely well! Trying to stay away from any drugs, but I might Nyquil it up tonight just to make sure I get a good sleep. Sore throat is almost gone, but I'm still congested. I'm gonna try and practice this afternoon, so we'll see how that goes.
That's been my life for that past month. Notice the strong focus on music for the duration. Pretty much all I've been doing. I'm enjoying it, to be sure, but not much else in the way of interesting new to report. I'll be sure to keep up with regular updates from this point on... I've always got something to rant about.
Alright, where to start... well, after the zipline tour, I returned to Victoria to start classes. I remembered from last year to not expect much in the way of organization, since Victoria is the king of relaxed atmospheres. I promised myself I would not be frustrated by the lack of any sort of schedule to make my life easier. After about 2 days I wanted to shoot the administration, experiencing the same levels of frustration and lack to continuity that I felt in my first week of UVIC. Gene wasn't a problem, he had just got back from Detroit, I knew he would be busy, but there was no way for me to find out things like: What are my TA responsibilities, when are rehearsals for brass chamber groups, how many groups will I be teaching, when are the auditions for the orchestra, and many more... *sigh*
Anyways, I didn't fall into a real schedule until last week, but things started to come together shortly after Gene got out of vacation mode. Auditions were held at the end of the first week, so once again I began to polish my "Ride of the Valkyries" excerpt (since I wasn't allowed to play it at home - ask Megs about that one...) and the Beethoven Symphony 9 excerpt that Gene had provided to all the low brass students. Ironically, this year, I found myself coaching a few different people through the excerpts, helping with style and rhythm and context, as opposed to last year when people hid outside my practice room door and listened (much like I guess I did when I was in my undergrad at U of L). It made me feel like I've been learning about the orchestral genre, since that was one area that I felt that I was lacking, since there is little to no opportunity to experience that in Lethbridge.
So, the auditions went well, and although my position in the orchestra this season was already assured, I feel I did well on the excerpts. There were some things I was not happy about, such as not having the sound quality that I usually have, but I was still coming out of the summer practice routine, and that has fixed itself. Gene was happy with the other areas that I've been working on in the orchestral excerpt process, such as time, rhythm and style. I guess it's hard to teach style without listening, but I've noticed that even at UVIC, where there is an insane amount of recordings available (which I "borrow" regularly) people do not take advantage of them to learn the works, and how the excerpt fits in the context of the entire piece. Not only that, they are upset and confused when they are told it doesn't sound like that when they play it. Anyway, this created a little revelation for me: It's the little things that make the musician. You can play the notes, but if you can't put together the little things that the composer wrote in, what's the point? Accents, phrasing, style, tempo, they're all there for a reason. If you can co-ordinate them all, that makes the whole thing work together.
Hmm... what happened next? Oh yeah, orchestra. So the orchestra is going to be the best at UVIC than it has been for the past several years, apparently. The string players that were holding the group back, via attitude or ability, have all graduated, and the new ones are all keeners, so they seem to be practicing quite a bit. Not only that, the brass section is hardcore solid! We have grad students in each area (horn, trumpet, trombone) and the section members are all great players! The tuba player is a prodigy that Gene has been teaching since he was in junior high, and he's been to Domain Forget twice already, and studied with Roger Bobo! Insanely good tuba player! I think he's mildly autistic (is that possible?) but that's another story. Anyway, point is, strong sections in the back. Tim, Jim and I were pretty excited, since we're planning on not holding back the sound this season. I will be making some poor viola player deaf by the end of the year! For the first concert coming up at the end of this month, we're performing Sibelius' Symphony No. 2, and Beethoven's Overture to Leonore, as well as a Haydn Symphony (100, the Military, I think) but there is no low brass for that. The Sibelius is awesome! Get a recording and listen to that one! I'll post it up after the concert so you can hear, certainly a great, powerful work!
Speaking of Tim, Jim and I, our quintet is back together again this season. We were happy to hear that we were all posted to the same group again, with some new additions. We gained a grad student horn player named Jacob, who is from the States. When I first met him, we had a G.W. Bush bashing session, so I knew we would get along fine. We also got a new trumpet player to replace our Cuban, Javier, who graduated and now runs a group on a cruise ship. Justin is a 3rd year, who practices more than I do (which is scary...) and he is really keen on the brass quintet realm. He's got the same problem (addiction) as I did in my undergrad: Buy lots of music! Anyways, we're gonna tackle some hard works this semester, starting with the Previn "4 Outings for Brass". We'll see where we go from there, but we're looking at performing Eric Ewazen's Concerto for Brass Quintet, "Shadowcatcher". We just have to suck up to Eric and see if we can score a piano reduction, since it's for quintet and Wind Orchestra! Hopefully, we'll score some free parts!
Rob has a buddy that he worked with at Nerd Corps who is a blues guitar player. Real nice guy, and a great musician. However, Podo was leaving to go back to Montreal. He and I have been saying for a while that we should do a gig together, so since he was leaving, we planned on out. It was a great time! Played in a small cafe in downtown Vancouver, and had a huge crowd! Certainly was a different experience! The sound was definitely something you don't think about hearing in that style. He plays a steel guitar, which has the characteristic blues sound that you hear in things like, say, Muddy Waters. Couple that with a trombone player doing fills and solos, and you've got some original material right there. I think we had some people confused for a while, but they got into it, and by the end of the night, were buying us drinks and having the bartender bring them up on stage. Since most of the crowd was people Rob and Podo know from work, we were shocked as the night went on to see people we didn't recognize coming up and taking pictures and videos of us up on stage! Guess they could hear us outside or something, and being downtown, you get one hell of a walk-in crowd. Rob videoed the whole thing, and I'm sure he's gonna cut a film of it, so when it's posted, I'll set up a link to his site.
I also decided to audition for an open position for the Vancouver Island Symphony. They are much like the LSO, except you get paid about 2 grand for the season. They were looking for an entire new trombone section, and Jim and I had both decided to go out for the audition. After I requested the audition list, I was a little concerned, as they were looking for us to play some of the hardest passages in bass 'bone excerpts! Some of it was from my NYO audition last year, so I figured it would be good for me to work them up. Jim's excerpts were killer, and it seemed like they were eliminating people from auditioning just by posting up an almost impossible list to play. These were all works that this group will not be performing anytime soon (Mahler 3, for instance) but they were on the list anyways. Turns out, I wasn't the only bass trombone auditioning. Scott, the teacher at UVIC for the undergrads, was also going out for the spot. He played with the Victoria Symphony last season, and went to the U of T, and studied with many, many great trombone players, including Alain Trudel. Scott is very good, but a very nice guy, and great to play with. He is my age, so we get along well, and I've been picking his brain, since he has more orchestral experience than I do. Anyways, I was borrowing a car to drive up to Nanaimo for the audition, and Scott needed a life, so he came with Jim and I. We were joking all the way up that I could just leave him on the side of the road, and the job was mine!
Anyways, I'd worked hard on the excerpts, and when I'm on my game, I can play them just as well as Scott, so I figured I had a chance, or at least was gonna give him a run for the money. However, it only took me about a minute and a half to blow it. We were asked to perform a solo work before the excerpts, and during mine, I literally went blank in the head. I knew my little etude forwards and back, but it was like a pitch black room in my head. I had to stop playing and pick it up again. That shook me up for the rest of the etude, and it was not solid as I hoped. Funny enough, the excerpts went great after that, but the damage was done, and they stopped me before could play them all. Scott didn't get to hear my screw up, so when I came out of the room, he said that I'd played some of the excerpts better than he did! That was nice to hear, but I explained what happened, and he laughed and said he did that too on his first few auditions. We're going to work on the audition process during our masterclasses, as I want to win the position with the NYO this season. There is something different about the nerves during an audition. It's not like a solo, or a recital, but they are still there. You know people are listening, but you can't seem them behind the screen, and you know it all rests on you playing something, that the last X number of people have played, perfectly. No room for interpretation, no room for original musicality. All I can say is that there is an art to auditions, and it's nothing like playing in the orchestra for real, nor is it like performing for a recital. It is something entirely different.
I've got all of my pieces picked out for my recital in March (either 5th, or 7th, still fighting that one out...). I'm still short about 10 minutes, but I'm trying to find a french tuba piece to work on. I've got a good spread of works on the program, but something in that light, rhythmic french style would fit in well. Otherwise, we've got some Spanish themed works, and Ewazen trombone octet, an unaccompanied work for good luck, a Sonatina that I really enjoy, and a duet with Jim that Ian McDougall wrote a few years back. That'll be fun, since we get to work directly with Ian on the thing, so we'll have it down! I've already got the Sonatina worked almost up to performance, and I'll probably play the first movement in a noon hour sometime this month. Depends on the accompanist situation. Hopefully this year I won't get screwed on that front. If nothing else, I know I can hire Charlotte again, but I don't want to have to spend too much money on that again. Especially since the damn pianists are assigned to us for a grade!
I seem to be the sub of choice as of late. I was out to the Greater Victoria Youth Orchestra (GVYO) yesterday morning to play. Actually kind of fun, as they are playing one of the excerpts that I worked up for the auditions the week before, the Berlioz Hungarian March. Lots of fun, but they were going slower than I expected. Man, that shit is harder to play slow! They played it for almost an hour, though, so I got to do it over and over again! There is nothing like actually playing something like that with a group to really understand how to play it. The conductor for the GVYO is also the conductor for the UVIC Orchestra, so I think I got to make a good impression on him. Not only was I prepared to play the work, but I think he was getting what he wanted from us where I was there, so he kept looking at me when the excerpt came up, smiling and giving my the huge Tom-like cue!
Today I'm recovering from whatever illness has been traveling around the music building. Started to get sick on Friday, but there was the concerto concert that night, and I wasn't going to miss that. The girl that won, with the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto, kicked some serious ass. I don't have any issue losing the competition to her, she played extremely well! Trying to stay away from any drugs, but I might Nyquil it up tonight just to make sure I get a good sleep. Sore throat is almost gone, but I'm still congested. I'm gonna try and practice this afternoon, so we'll see how that goes.
That's been my life for that past month. Notice the strong focus on music for the duration. Pretty much all I've been doing. I'm enjoying it, to be sure, but not much else in the way of interesting new to report. I'll be sure to keep up with regular updates from this point on... I've always got something to rant about.
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