"I'm late! I'm late!"

I feel like the Mad Hatter. I have no time to post! My apologies!

Printemps (Spring)

 I declare,this is the best year of weather I have seen my whole, entire life. Last summer was pretty temperate, the fall was nice, we had several big snowstorms this winter (!!!!!!!!), and now this marvelous spring. All nature sings of the LORD, it really does.

    I can hear one of those birds chirping away, and it makes me want to write a piece of music using bird noises. That would be a fun project. I want to include the peeper frogs, too. Sansa mp3 players have voice recorders that are very sensitive and great for this type of thing. And then there’s GarageBand, with its endless options. Yep. I’m going to make that a school project, haha. I love home schooling.

    Speaking of which, school is going pretty well. I really enjoy psychology, and my music activities are more varied than ever, which is wonderful. I look forward to the hour a week I spend with Justice, my sweet, 4-year-old friend who has agenesis of the corpus callosum (she was born without the broad band of nerve fibers joining the two hemispheres of the brain [New Oxford American Dictionary], which means, I think, that the two sides have a hard time talking to each other. ) Anyway, that is the day we play music together. 

    Sorry about the change of font. I can’t figure out what I was using before. 

    The orchestra concert went well. According to our conductor it wasn’t as good as the dress rehearsal but still very good. I messed up a little on the sextet piece, partly because I had never played on that piano before, but we held it together. I doubt anybody noticed, anyway. Listen tohttp://itunes.apple.com/us/album/pierrot-lunaire-op-21-1912/id58103265?i=58103503 and see what I mean. You'll probably be glad you don’t have to listen to the whole thing. Needless to say, it was a learning experience. There’s a clarinet, violin, flute, cello, piano and singer in there. The string quartet played 
 http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/string-quartet-no-3-mishima/id79033083?i=79033072  comes with its own set of difficulties. Our group did really well.

Well, that’s it for today. Adios.

Tale of the Cramming Orchestra

...And the orchestra pulls an all-nighter, rehearsing until their bow hair is gone, their fingers stiffen up and their reeds can give no more. But the musicians labor on, knowing that they have only one more day until the concert, and their playing needs to improve. Tempers flare, nerves grow thin, and ears wear out. “I honestly can’t tell the difference between an A and an A-flat anymore, maestro. Really.” 

Okay, well, it didn’t go exactly like that, but we did add half an hour to the practice time, and my sextet had to practice for an hour on top of that. That’s 3 1/2 hours total playing time. Gabe, my stand-partner, and I had sore backs by the end, but it didn’t turn out as bad as we thought it would. Maybe we passed the point of the night when we are usually getting ready for bed, so we got a second wave of energy.

Anyway, it was a good rehearsal, considering we lost two practices to the snow storms. I’m looking forward to the concert.