Before the beginning of this movement would be an excellent time to blow out your tone holes.
Mm 30 I found this sextuplet weirdly prone to fumbles for a long time. Used the L only for Eb and R4 for Gb. I struggled for a long time with the last note. Using the D flick key for it makes it super easy, in tune, easy to fade… oh, if it doesn’t have water in it. If it does have water, all that will emerge is a pathetic gurgle. Also, there’s no way to figure out in advance what state the tone hole might be in, and I found mine frequently managed to fill with water— somehow— during the movement, even if I cleared it out beforehand. So about a month before the performance, I finally threw in the towel with it and started using the C key, gradually shading with the L 2nd finger to help with the fade.
Interestingly, much of the concertmaster solo part is marked in various shades of soft. Bassoonists, who are conditioned by Beethoven symphonies to know that “p” stands for “play out” and “f” stands for “fuck it, this is the someone else’s responsibility,” tend to take dynamic markings with a heavy grain of salt, which can be lent to a violinist friend in a time of need.
I don’t know why, but before this movement starts, I constantly have the urge to put the whisper lock on, and need to remind myself to… not.
Mm 12, useful to anchor the mind on the Bs.
Mm 22, it is tempting to get started early on these, but the B and the C take place on the second and fourth eighth notes of the bar, respectively.
Mm 29, I found it helped with overall cleanliness to: 1) out of all the notes that take place on the second eighth note beat, focus on the open F; and 2) on the first eighth note beat, play the E with the overblown single-finger fingering, not the full E fingering, and then flick the A that comes after it. Mm 38, things are getting a bit heated rhythmically, and Chris Millard made the extremely helpful suggestion that, instead of feeling the first half of the bar as a triplet, that you continue feeling it in eighths (ie with the emphasis, internally, on the B.
Mm 39, theoretically the same should apply to the identical figure in he second half of the bar. For some reason, though, I was never able to feel it that way. Go figure.
Mm 43: so, is there a difference, practically, between the rhythm in this bar and in mm 11 et al? Reach for the stars, friend-o! Or don’t. I doubt anyone will notice or care. I think I tried to make a difference between the much more obviously juxtaposed 45 and 46, by which time the bassoon is accompaniment and it doesn’t matter anyway.
Mm 48, I found focusing on the E of the fourth eighth note beat made the thing marginally more likely to happen.
This cantabile section is a memorization nightmare. I went by the rule of thumb that most of the held notes have two beats happen during their tenure— whatever their actual length might be— and memorized specific deviations from that rule. Once I had it in my head, I actually had to look away from the part during the performance, or the visual would cause me to second-guess what I knew was correct.
Mm 101-102 it is very easy for the triplet-sixteenth rests in the middle of the beats to be too long, especially if you are attempting to play the rhythm in the latter half of 100 as a true sixteenth pattern. I found that these two bars had a tendency to drag, but then 103-105 are easy to rush. Neither option is particularly recommended at this point in the shitstorm.
Mm 108 should feel like it is happening in slow motion. The violin shot in the middle of it has nothing to do with anything.
I found it helpful to avoid breathing in the first eighth beat of 109.
Mm 114-116 more slow-mo. If you rush here, you are gonna experience some intense regret real soon.
The most difficult part of the next section is just not letting the excitement get you you. It’s pure movie-star John Williams but for 117-125 I just had to stay on the back of the beat, listen to the bass clarinet and section bassoons during the rests, and focus on anchoring on the G#s in 123 and 125.
The most difficult part of mm 130-131 is literally everything. By the time I performed the piece, I could play these bars correctly. It took two years. Ways that I practiced it, at various points:
Slowly, obviously. Really slowly.
Omitting the entire upwards run, focusing on the interval between the first note of each beat, and the triplet at the beat
Omitting the triplet at the end of the beat, focusing on the septuplets as groupings of 4+3
Focusing on specific notes as anchors: for me, the ones that were most important to concentrate on nailing were the Bb and E in the first septuplet run, the C in the sextuplet, the A in the triplet immediately following the sextuplet, and then the final septuplet isn’t too bad with an emphasis on the octave between the Gs, and aided by the one-finger E and overblown open F.
Don’t let the wizard get you with the broom on your way out.
One week ago today, I played John Williams’s _Five Sacred Trees _with the Niagara Symphony Orchestra.
I actually didn’t choose this piece. Bradley Thachuck, the music director of the NSO, asked if I wanted to play it; I had heard of it, of course, and said yes… and then listened to it. That was in February of 2016; I ordered the part right away and started practicing it. And continued practicing it, pretty consistently, for the next two years. This turned out to be a little bit overkill, but actually… not all that much.
Over the course of the two years that I invested in it, I learned, re-learned, memorized, and agonized over every bar in the piece, so now that it’s all over, it seems like it would be worthwhile to write it all down in the form of detailed notes about how I played it. These are not, of course, instructions to be followed; what worked for me may not be best for someone else, and some of these decisions were only arrived at after a practicing process that was in itself valuable. They are, though, the kind of thing that I think I would have appreciated reading two years ago; just a list of issues and how one person chose to work through them. With a standard like the Mozart concerto, you already begin work on it with an idea of what the issues and choices are, bar-by-bar. Here are some ideas about Five Sacred Trees.
A note on memorization: I did memorize it, and made a video recording with piano for memory, both for rehearsal and archival purposes. When I mentioned to Stephane Levesque, who played the piece with the OSM, that I was hoping to perform from memory, his horrified reaction made me reconsider. Stephane rarely forbade me from or forced me to do anything, as a student, but when he did there was usually a very good reason, so a strong reaction from him, based on performance experience with the piece in question, seemed worth paying attention to. I ended up having the music in front of me in performance and found some parts of it– like the opening cadenza, and much of Dathi– easier with my eyes closed, while some parts, like Tortan and Craeb Uisnig, were easier with eyes open (but I was still very glad I didn’t need my eyes glued to the part, and could swivel to communicate easily with the conductor and concertmaster.)
I’ll post these by movement, so here are my notes on Eo Mugna.
Opening: Big breath out, empty lungs. Small breath in and out at the bottom. Big breath in. There’s a crescendo on the first note, but leaving too much room for it makes the entrance sound timid.
Mm 4, whisper lock on.
Mm 5, eighth notes long to contrast with the accents on many of the other eighths in the opening.
Mm 7, there is a decrescendo on the low C in the 1st edition, removed in the 2nd. I settled on a slight decrescendo but still an emphatic vibrato and ending to the note.
Mm 8-9, I chose to take a large pause and then play this section with all legato eighth notes.
Mm 10, long low C and then accelerated up the run, using the R4 F# and found that anchoring my attention on the Bb ensured it emerged cleanly. I probably worked this run up from quarter=20 about fifteen separate times, and it stuck a little more each time.
Mm 11, started extremely slowly and sped up, with the last two eights aided by the L-only Eb fingering.
Mm 12 aided by a firm grip on the low G. The final D of the bar is, for some reason, extremely intuitive to play as an eighth note in the tempo of the new section, which it is not. The conductor requested that I elongate it, so I did, but for some reason it didn’t occur to me to just play it as a quarter in the new tempo, which would be an excellent length.
My tempo for the main section was intentionally rather fast: more like 85 (to the marked 72-76.) I like this tempo because it allows the entire theme to be played comfortably in one breath, and because the marked tempo sounds draggy to me, but maybe I’m just young and impatient.
So, what’s the difference between a grace note and a thirty-second in this passage? I have been reliably informed that John Williams, when asked this question, had no strong opinion on the matter. One could make a case that, in the interest of not confusing the cello section, who unlike the bassoonist are individually tasked with playing this theme in unison with other people, the second quarter beat of mm 13 should be deliberately placed on the beat and not a moment before, whereas the second quarter beat of mm 16 should have the grace note placed slightly ahead of it.
Mm 19, I rather enjoy that the first half of the bar contains a sixteenth note instead of the expected thirty-second, and make possibly an inappropriately big deal of it.
Mm 21 could be interpreted as a change of character and a bouncier articulation, and I was planning on doing so, but once I was actually standing beside the cello section taking their shot at the theme, it suddenly seemed a little obnoxious, and I smoothed it out.
Memorization-wise, mm 27 and 36 are easy to mix up and end up in the wrong place. My mnemonic was that the first time is fancier (grace note before the 2nd big beat of 27, omitted in 36) and started higher, and the second time around I just want to get it over with (no grace note) and end lower (the downwards run starts on G in 37, E in 28.)
Mm 29, the low D looks like it should have to be quiet. It doesn’t; it will be swallowed by the bass clarinet and the wind section anyway, so whatever volume will be best in tune is fine.
I put the lock on during the low G in 28 and remove it after the D just for peace of mind.
Mm 34, I play the first A of the run long and the high A with the L hand only. Mm 36-37 is conspicuously lacking in dynamic guidance, but with aggressive section that comes after it, I decided to go for loud.
Mm 52-53: should the first bassoon note have a clearly audible attack, or should it start in the ring of the orchestra’s final chord? I’ve heard it both ways, but chose to observe the accent and make sure by attack was heard.
Mm 55 whisper lock on in caesura.
Mm 55-56, all the eighths have legato markings, which makes a nice contrast with 53-54 and also with the sfz in 57, where I took Chris Millard’s suggestion to conceive of it “like a frog burping.”
Mm 57-58: are the eighth notes grouped six and three, or do the slurs stand in contrast to the emphasis that is properly place on the first and second quarter beats of 58? After all, this section is essentially meterless, yet he still put a bar line in the middle of this ascending line and chose the vehicle of eighth notes to convey the desired pitches. There’s a strong argument for the latter, but I chose to phrase with the slurs.
Unlock before mm 59. 59, grouped the run 3-3-4 to accelerate.
If memorizing, I implore you to not play mm 16 where mm 62 should be.
Mm 64, I like the sfz interpreted as a lift before the downbeat of the next measure.
Starting mm 66, it’s easy to get too soft, too fast. The dim only starts in mm 70.
I am back in Regina as of today! My first port of call for this holiday break, immediately following the Messiah, was Calgary, where Mike and I spent the first part of the holiday with his parents. For the past few years we’ve been there just before Christmas, so they usually pick a date to call “Christmas” and celebrate Christmas Eve and morning accordingly. I was introduced to The Shepherd radio play, which I hadn’t heard before, as well as the supposedly French-Canadian tradition of tortiere as a Christmas Eve dish.
Then, on actual Christmas Eve, we went to see my parents, just in time for a family meal. After a few days in Toronto, we headed back to Kitchener for the rest of the break (we’ll, break for me, Nutcracker for Mike.)
I have two Masterworks concerts left with Regina before heading back to Ontario for Five Sacred Trees. I’ve been debating the best way to deal with the issue of music for the performance. I have memorized it, and have been doing memorized runs of the entire work almost every day for about a month already. However, pretty much everyone who has played it has advised me to play it with the music onstage. As a wind player, I don’t have a lot of experience with playing solo repertoire, well, at all, compared to string and piano players; and memorization isn’t expected of wind players the way it is of other families of instruments. So I will have the part onstage with me.
However, it’s complicated to arrange the page turns so that they work out well; and even once photocopied, the pages require folding over and under each other in a way that would look awkward to do between movements. I don’t want to have to be shuffling around with pages between every movement, especially if I have it memorized anyway. I even, if it turns out to be possible for all relevant parties in the orchestra, would like to do almost all of it attaca from movement to movement— excepting the break between Tortan and Eo Rossa, which requires vigorous tone hole-blowing and prayers to the gods of gurgling water incidents :P
I considered getting a foot pedal and playing it off of tablet; but that then adds in the potential for technological malfunction; and since there are electronic components in concert halls that could interfere with the Bluetooth that connects the pedal to the tablet, a successful run at home doesn’t guarantee success in concert.
I still have a little bit of time to figure something out…
Did you hear? That creep that everyone knew about, now, like, everyone everyone knows about! In the aftermath of these “revelations,” in all industries, it has become customary for the organization that hired and retained the individual in question to adopt a kind of collective wide-eyed expression, a shocked and innocent “oh goodness, I had no idea!” kind of passive horror.
The first irritating thing about this is how calculated and transparent it is. The second irritating thing is that it’s difficult to prove it actually untrue. Did the CEO or the Board of Directors of an organization know that they were hiring and/or retaining a rapist, a child pornographer, a perpetrator of violent assault— in short, a criminal? Maybe they didn’t. (Maybe they didn’t look all that hard.) In some cases— USA Gymnastics, looking at you— they demonstrably did know, and just cared more about their own paycheques than about the well-being of the members of their organization. However, in some cases, as unlikely as it seems, one has to admit the possibility that they didn’t know. There’s a slim possibility that the bigwigs may not have known they were employing a criminal.
But there’s an easier question to ask these people, and a more difficult one to wiggle out of: did you know he was an asshole? Come on now. Really. Look me in the eye and tell me you had no idea he was an asshole. I double-dog dare you. This isn’t a spurious question. There is a strong correlation, it seems, between a powerful individual being an asshole, and a powerful individual being a criminal asshole. It makes sense that someone who treats people around them with casual disrespect is also likely to show disrespect in more serious ways. This is bad news for the orchestra business. The cult of personality surrounding the idea of the conductor is almost exclusively based on the difficult-to-define but immediately recognizable suite of traits broadly described as assholeishness. It’s such a ubiquitous trait on the podium— even in the leadership styles of people who are not assholes off the podium, and seemed to have specifically acquired the trait as a career-development move—that it’s actually somewhat jarring, as a musician, to encounter a kind, skilled and respectful human who also behaves that way while conducting. (Which jarring feeling, luckily for me, is fresh in my mind from my current gig.)
And look. There are asshole conductors that I like. There are asshole conductors who helped my career, or withheld their wrath from me individually in ways that were confidence-building. (Can anyone who exited the music education system with a modicum of confidence deny that at least some of it was built on a foundation of schadenfreude?) Do I think that everyone who’s rude on the podium is also a criminal? No. I don’t think so. Or at least, I hope not. I just wouldn’t be surprised, is all. It would be disingenuous to act surprised when someone who built their careers publicly terrorizing subordinates turns out to have also been terrorizing subordinates in private.
So what does this mean for musical organizations going forward? Can managers and board members evaluating potential hires start actually prioritizing hiring people who aren’t assholes? Are we finally going to stop saying things like, “yeah, he’s kind of an asshole, but he’s a good conductor…” for that matter, can we retire the term “brasshole” and the indulgent smiles that go with it? Being an asshole isn’t a criminal act. And despite what some suspiciously defensive dudes seem to think, nobody is trying to make it one. It’s just something which will—hopefully, in the future— mean that nobody wants to hire you. So they won’t have to pretend to be surprised by you later.
Yep! It’s on the internet, even. With my picture and everything. So that you, too, can be puzzled at the sight of a reed player holding their instrument with a reed on the bocal and also wearing red lipstick for some reason. When Bradley Thachuk, the music director in Niagara, first suggested that I play John Williams’ Five Sacred Trees and I agreed, to be perfectly honest I couldn’t have hummed you a single bar of it. I sent off an email saying yes, that sounds like a good choice, then hopped over to youtube to listen to it. And thought, oh, this sounds kinda hard. Uh-oh. That was about a year and a half ago. That initial listen put the fear of God in me, and I immediately ordered a part and started working on it. Finally, about two weeks ago, I could at last say that I was able to play all the right notes, in the right order, at more or less the right tempo. (Actually, if I had said that two weeks ago, I would have been technically incorrect– I only noticed yesterday that I learned a run in the fourth movement– luckily only a single bar– in the wrong clef. WHOOPS. Fixed now.) Not-so-coincidentally, last week I traveled to Ottawa to have a lesson with Christopher Millard, principal bassoon in NACO, on the piece. Usually, I would prefer to be farther along in the preparation process than just “able to play correct pitches” before traveling for a lesson. But in this instance, I didn’t really have choice. I knew I wanted to play it for someone who had performed it recently, and Chris gave the Canadian premiere of the work. And it needed to be before he left for summer festival work in mid-July, because on August 12th, I’m getting in the car and beginning the drive to Regina for the season. So, that’s just the way it was. And honestly? I needed the deadline of a lesson to make me put my butt in a chair and finish learning the thing. In a sense, the time, expense and general inconvenience involved in going to Ottawa was the whole point. As they say in my current home city of Kitchener-Waterloo: it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. As the vast legions of ABD graduate students of the world can tell you, human psychology is uniquely poorly equipped to deal with large projects with definite endpoints but no immediate pressures driving them forward. So, creating a short-term deadline that had meaning and importance suddenly became a much higher priority for me when I won the Regina audition. Prior to that audition, I had been planning on attending the Glenn Gould School for next year. I had decided it was a good time to go back to school because I wanted the structure of school to help me achieve my goals. And mostly what structure is, is small but strategically placed deadlines. Lessons every week, studio recitals every few months, final recital at the end of your degree. (Or something similar to that schedule.) I wasn’t at all worried about learning this enormous concerto, because I would have all the right kinds of pressure to keep me on track with it. I might even have other performance opportunities (recital, concerto competition, etc.) to get it ready. As soon as I got the Regina job, all of that assurance vanished. Not only would I not have any of those same small deadlines looming for the concerto, suddenly I had a whole lot of new deadlines, of a sort I have never really encountered before: namely, preparing and performing an entire, full-time season as a principal player in a professional orchestra. Considering that this time last year I had just been accepted to paramedic college and was seriously considering how relaxing and fun it would be to just play music as an amateur, uh, a principal job and a concerto in the same season is a little bit of a change of pace. (Spoiler alert: I did not end up attending paramedic college this year. I like having hobbies, but I’m not quite at the win-a-bassoon-job-while-in-school-for-a-completely-different-discipline kind of level.) So, that’s what the next six months are going to be about for me: manufacturing deadlines, as well as managing the ones I already have. I’m grateful for my time as a freelancer/underemployed musician (let’s be real here) because it taught me that manufacturing deadlines is a huge part of a life in music. Woohoo! Let’s all make up some arbitrary dates to freak out over!
It’s a bit difficult, as a freelancer, to separate “season” and “summer” in the way that someone with a job, or even a student, can. However, it’s probably safe to say that it’s now the summer for me: I played my last concert with the Niagara Symphony for the time being two weeks ago– I am going to be on leave from the NSO next year as I start my new job as principal of the Regina Symphony, and couldn’t have asked for a better ending to my time with the NSO than playing Mahler’s 2nd symphony, with my partner playing beside me.
The week after, we were going to work together again as I came to visit him at his job, and I played 3rd and contra on– I am not making this up– Mahler 1. Yes, two Mahler symphonies in as many weeks: I’m pretty sure this is what I imagined being a professional musician would be like in my first year of music school.
That concert was particularly special because it was Music Director Edwin Outwater’s final farewell to the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. During the many bars of rests I had the privilege and pleasure of counting during that concert, I also had the opportunity to reflect on this crazy profession; after ten years– a decent amount of time, in MD terms– here’s a guy choosing to move on from his job in part because that’s simply what’s done, not to mention the fact that he also lives and works in a different country. This is normal for a conductor. And to a lesser extent it’s normal for musicians, too.
In the past two years of “being a freelancer,” I’ve worked in three of the four farthest practicable corners of the province– Windsor in the west, Niagara in the south, and Thunder Bay in the north. (The farthest east I’ve been is Oshawa with the Ontario Philharmonic, and while I hear the Kingston Symphony is a nice band, I don’t exactly regret missing the opportunity to have driven the three and a half hours it would take to get to a gig in Kingston from Kitchener…) There are really great, fun things about doing this. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I have a decent understanding of the geography and transportation systems of the entire province. And, by and large, I’ve been lucky that so many of the places I work are beautiful. St. Catharine’s is one of the most astoundingly quick-growing cities I’ve ever been in – it seems like every concert cycle, there are three or four new businesses on St. Paul street alone. Thunder Bay has some of the most stunning views from inside any city, ever. I’ve played pops tunes beside Niagara Falls underneath fireworks displays, I’ve stood on the bank of the Detroit River and listened to a Creedence Clearwater Revival reunion concert being played in another country, I’ve gotten to live and work in places like Dundas and Ancaster which, as a Torontonian, would have remained in the category of “places vaguely near here that aren’t” if I hadn’t discovered how gorgeous and special they were. I’ve played on the rooftop of a condo in downtown Toronto while being filmed by a helicopter. My job, such as it is, for the past few years has been really exciting, and when I attempt to describe what I do to people, they invariably seem intrigued and somewhat envious. But also confused.
Because it’s hard to explain to people in other industries why this– where by “this,” I really mean this much gorram driving-- seems like a reasonable thing to do as some semblance of a regular job. And to a large extent, it’s not. It’s a totally ridiculous way to make a living that is wearing on me after only two years, and while there are some people who manage to sustain it long-term, I suspect I would opt-out if it started to seem like I might have to be one of them.
But at the moment, the pendulum is swinging the other way: In mid-August, I’ll load the car up and drive for four days, to Regina, where for the first time in my life I’ll be making all (or most) of my income from a single source, an employer who provides me with benefits and, following the tenure process, the guarantee of a job to come back to.
So, that’s different. It’s also eerily familiar: get in the car, drive, play. The timelines are just extended.
In all seriousness, though, I am really looking forward to this drive in the way that I don’t look forward to driving, say, in rush hour on the 403. I’ve done about half of it before– the bit between Toronto and Sault St. Marie, and then the Soo to Thunder Bay– and then the next two legs (Thunder Bay to Winnipeg, Winnipeg to Regina) are new to me (except I have been a passenger in a bus going Thunder Bay to Kenora… so yes, I will probably stop at Egli’s on my way by.)
I’m spending the summer, in chronological order: coaching gymnastics, going to Ottawa to have a lesson on Five Sacred Trees with Chris Millard, having a pre-party in Toronto for my wedding, going to ADULT GYMNASTICS CAMP WITH MY ADULT GYMNASTICS FRIENDS OMG THIS IS A REAL THING THAT EXISTS AND I AM GOING, getting married in Calgary, going on a honeymoon-type hiking adventure, possibly coaching some more gymnastics, and then… leaving.
Here’s the thing about freelancing. In music school, you learn how to do auditions. You learn how to do auditions because you do a lot of them; at least one a year, maybe two, just to be ranked in your core ensembles, plus plenty of others; youth orchestras, summer festivals, big solos, professional orchestras. If you do it right, you get pretty good at auditions. You acquire an internal locus of control vis a vis auditions, and maybe even start to enjoy them. By the end of music school, though, you’ve acquired not just an aptitude for auditions, but some specific ideas about their outcomes. Because school auditions aren’t like other auditions. One person doesn’t win and the others walk away with nothing. One person wins, more or less, and the next few people still get something pretty good, and the rest get a place at the bottom of the totem pole. If you school experience works for you, it’s likely that you start right at the bottom, and work your way up to the top, or near the top, as you advance. It’s a real good feeling. Having a hierarchy can be scary— but it can also be comforting. For the duration of your time in music school, you can point to a list of names on the wall and say “look! This is me. This is where I fit. I am better than these people, and these other people are better than me. If I keep working, I will keep rising. Life is fair.” The real world doesn’t work that way. First of all, obviously, that’s not how professional auditions work. The bottom 90% of candidates aren’t ranked; they’re just told to go home. The top 10% may well fall into a ranking (who got to the semis/finals/got a trial) but only one positions really matters, and it’s #1. Freelancing also doesn’t work like that, because not only is there no ranking, there’s no winner at all. Sure, there are people who get more gigs than other people. But how do you decide who wins? Is it the person who makes the most money? (Are they allowed to have a day job?) The person first on the sub list for the most prestigious ensemble? (Who decides what’s most prestigious? Does a symphony orchestra beat out an opera orchestra?) The person with the most students? (Are they actually a good teacher, or just enterprising?) There’s no way to decide. The ranking simply doesn’t exist. Everyone is just humans, trying to strike a balance between survival and artistic fulfillment. For a recent graduate of a music school with a defined system of ranking, this isn’t the relief one might think it would be. It’s like having the carpet yanked out from under your feet. Suddenly, you’re not owed anything. There’s not even anything you can do to become owed anything. And if you don’t wise up to that fact, things can get ugly. Instead of focusing on your own improvement, it’s easy to become subconsciously obsessed with reconstructing a ranking that never existed. Who’s in town? What gigs are they getting? Should I have gotten that gig? Wow, that person has a damn fine-lookin’ website. That person went to a better school than me, so they win over me. I once played with that person while they were having a bad day, so I win over them. Am I winning as much as I should be? How can I win more? A preoccupation with winning a nonexistent competition can be paralysing. When abstract victory is more important than concrete self-improvement, practice suffers. And when practice suffers, you guessed it… it sure don’t feel like winning. Is this music school’s fault? Nah. The system by which most schools rank and place students in ensembles is fair, and for many people, effectively motivates improvement. It’s just one of those many ways in which school can’t, and maybe shouldn’t prepare you for the real world. So, folks, time to log off and go practice.
I was waitlisted for Rice. Considering I started the process resigned to the idea of not even getting past the prescreening, I feel A-OK about that!
I participated in my very first concerto competition! A few weeks ago I flew to Toronto for a day to play in the finals of the Orchestra Toronto concerto competition. The winner ended up being a flutist that I went to McGill with (3/4 of the finalists were McGill people, interestingly…) but I was still very happy with how I played. Because of the competition, I ended up pulling out of the opera audition I was going to do around the same time after realizing that the job sounded good in theory but would actually be extremely inconvenient in practice. Plus, I could do the competition without missing out on any services in Thunder Bay, whereas for the audition I would have lost a few days worth of pay for an audition that didn’t serve my interests anyway.
I went to a barn dance at a farm in Neebing the other night with some symphony friends! Merrie, our principal trumpet, is also a Ceilidh dance caller, and her husband is a celtic fiddler who was playing with a guitar player visiting from Quebec. It was awwweeesome.
The symphony season ends on the 3rd of May, but I am staying an extra week to play a show with my wind quintet! It will be at 3 PM on May 9th at the Foundry. The title of the show is “Music of the Americas,” despite my mostly-joking suggestion of “Nothing European.” Entrance is by donation.
I guess I technically have two symphony seasons to play the ends of– I haven’t been in St. Catharine’s very much this year, but I’ll be with the Niagara Symphony for the last concert of the season on May 17, in which, bizarrely, we are playing one of the same pieces that we played in my first concert in Thunder Bay– Christos Hatzis’ Lamento, sung by Sarah Slean. This will be our last concert in Sean O’Sullivan theatre at Brock– next season, we will be moving into the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre, the new PAC in downtown St. Catherine’s. (FirstOntario is apparently a credit union that made a major donation, but it’s kind of a snazzy name for it, isn’t it?)
For the TBSO’s Music in the Classroom program, today I was in schools with a wind quintet. Among many other things we played the Adagio from Hetu’s wind quintet, and the kids were asked to think during the movement about what kind of scene would belong to that music in a movie. One tiny kid confidently raised his hand and said, “D-Day.” Hear for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CspMEPqJro
