An Amazing Day of Music!!

So yesterday I had some quite awesome experiences. To start with, I was in Elliot Magaziner's Office during my normal time (he's the conductor, I'm the orchestra manager) & my friend comes over to chill. So we're looking through past programs and music that the conductor had. First of all, there were some amazing orchestral programs in the past (he's been there for about 40 years or so now). There were programs where they did all of Carnival of the Animals, or had Shostakovitch & Mahler on the same program... I wish we could do things of that caliber in orchestra now...

2 exciting discoveries came out of this:

1. A set of duets for cello & violin where the cello part is mostly in treble cleff. My teacher is going to coach it next semester & had a few other ideas of things we could wok on.
2. Copies of the "From the New World" When it was Symphony No. 5 (apparently they discovered back in the 70s that there were some more in between 4 & the rest...)

So that was really cool. On top of that, I had a neat lesson. Since we've gone through the 1st 2 Bach Suites in my previous 3 lessons, and the rest of the music on my recital is basically chamber music, we took a bit of a different direction this time. We worked on technique, first doing octave shifts & concentrating on alignment, then coming up with the idea of doing octave double stops, which is quite cool. Then my teacher introduced me to the "nail that pitch in thumb position" game, and said that I should do that while practicing to really solidify my pitch in that register and to develop reference points. After that (or maybe it was before all this), we worked on Popper 11, which I did pretty well on considering that I haven't looked at it in weeks. We talked about some of the harmony in it & the practice methods for it (doing it *really* slowly for intonation & hand position) & right hand technique, which involved a loose wrist, jumping off the strings with the elbow of the bow hand for string skips & having firm fingers. So basically it was a cool & somewhat more relaxed, but still instructional lesson. Now I have all this work to do on Bach, and I still need to learn my piece that I'm rehearsing to night for cello/clarinet (it's an original work by Jen Castellano)...

So anyway, here's the amazing part. My friend Andrew (from earlier) & I go up to Pleasantville to see Brian Skarstad to get our bows rehaired. To start off, he's an amazing violin maker - really knows his stuff & is quite cool. We talk about music and stuff for a bit, I recommended Break of Reality to him. Then he asks us if we want to see something cool... He pulls out a violin from a crappy plastic case & says "This is Paganini's Violin". I asked him how he could possibly know that (and of course was wondering how it's in Pleasantville, NY of all places, instead of... um, Italy!). He pulls out this book with pictures of rare violins & looks it up in there. Sure enough, it had the same markings and patterns and all that. Here's some pictures of it http://www.giordanoviolins.com/english/cannone02.html . So after that amazing experience, we talked a bit more, gave him our bows to rehair, and I went home & started looking up Paganini... I wish I could play some of his music, because he would have so many interesting stories for program notes... I'd say maybe I could shoot for one of the caprices for next year, but I'm not sure I'd believe it.

After that, I practiced for about 3 hours straight... well, probably about an hour/hour and a half was experimenting with alignment, which was quite productive. The rest was slow practice spent on the Allemande from the 2nd Bach suite & on technique (I'm evolving my previous method):

1. Play a barred fifth in tempo with the following rhythms - 1 Quarter, 2 8th, 3 Triplets, 4 Sixteenths ... basically working on subdivisions of 1, 2, 3 & 4 ... I'm going to add in quintuplets, sextuplets, septuplets & 32nd notes eventually, which should prove quite challenging even at slow tempos.
2. Repeat the above, only change the interval from a P5 to a M6 - great for intonation/hand position & callous building.

Afterwards, while I was reading stories about Paganini, I became inspired to start writing music & wrote the intro to what I think is going to be a suite for solo cello... I really want to start to work some writing for flute into my stuff soon too...

That's all for now... dress rehearsal that I'm not ready for today & then a performance on sunday - Then I have 5 days to have all my recital material perfect!! Also, playing at a memorial service for a teacher who passed away last year...

Some thoughts & reflections

So, I've been insanely busy lately & haven't had much of a chance to update this... not to mention, i's been a struggle to find enough practice time, which is beginning to frustrate me - it's so hard not to socialize too mcuh...

On the other hand, some other things of note:

1. Universal Arpeggio Fingerings
minor: 1 4 1
major: 1 4 2
dominant: 1 4 1 2 (change of position always on the septime)
diminished: 1 4 1 4


2. I'm going to stop showing up to lessons underprepared - I don't care what classwork I have to cut out, or how much sleep I don't get - it's extremely unbeneficial to me & the teacher, and everytime I don't practice, I lose that much more of the focus... I need to hang on to my memories of summit more vividly... it's beginning to seem distant though...


I was gonna write more... but I'm awy too exhausted...

Not Quite Keeping Up the Pace...

Wow, it has been an intensely busy week!

I had my lesson to day, and it was good/productive, but I went into it a little underprepared... and, though I've been making good progress since coming back to school... I'm starting to lose sight of the vision just a bit... though not being really prepared for my lesson, sorta kicked me into shape, and it's amazing to see the effect that technical work has been having on me...

Still though, it's been hard to practice everything I'm supposed to be working on & on top of that, I realized earlier today that I haven't actually practiced piano for the whole 2 weeks that I've been here, which is really bad, b/c I'm supposed to know this piano piece by monday (It's cool, it's a Lydian Nocturne)... thankfully, I've learned how to work on pieces and memorize them from keyboard harmony & from all my cello work since summit... it's just a matter of finding the time to put in for piano on top of finding the to put in for cello... I want to get at least a few days where I practice for 6 hrs. a day... I miss doing that...like3 hours has been really inspiring, but I know that I could do so much more with 6 & I *really* need to step things up so that I at least have a chance of making it into conservatory in 3 years.

On a good note though, my technical improvements keep making me think of Mr. O, which is incredibly inspiring, and my bow arm is getting a lot smoother/I'm playing in the string a lot more... I may be cutting off a day from work at some point since I've got so much going on...

I had to turn down what seemed like a really sweet opportunity to play in a musical... the pay wouldn't have been that great, but still, it would have been amazing... that kind of sucked, but oh well... also, I responded to an ad that was looking for a cellist to play the Kol Nidre service, so hopefully I've got that gig... can't wait to hear back from them...

I guess that's it for right now... in my last two lessons, I've plowed through Bach Suites 1 & 2 ... now I just have to technique the crap out of em & have them completely memorized & up to performance standard in about 3 weeks ... I also have to create my program notes very, very soon... that should be cool...