Recital Time…

It’s almost time for the annual recital again! Ours is this Thursday (weird day, I know; it was supposed to be Friday but that’s graduation so some people couldn’t come.) Ben and I are doing the Bach Double together. I am really worried about the timing; I tend to go too fast and Ben tends to be erratic in his tempo, and I also tend to play louder than him.

 When I was younger and still doing the traditional Suzuki method, the Bach Double was a VERY BIG DEAL. There are ten Suzuki levels total, and the Concerto for Two Violins is the last piece in book 4, and then you learn the first violin part as the last piece in book 5. Ben is in book four; I am about to start book seven but I picked up book five again to play with him.

Every year, right before the play-down—play-down is when the teenagers start with the most advanced milestone pieces (Bach’s Concerto in a, Fiocco Allegro, La Folia, the district-level stuff) and gradually work their way down, to medium pieces like Humoresque, then to Minuet in G, and more and more kids come to the front as pieces they know come up, until eventually even the three-year-olds are standing and playing the Twinkle Variations with everyone else. It’s a Suzuki Tradition.

Anyway, before we did that, the kids who knew how would stand up and play the Bach Double. Every year since you were three or four you would sit and watch until finally, usually around eleven, you could stand up and play with them. It was always fun to see who had learned it in the last year, and who had moved on from second violin to first violin. And amazingly, even though everyone hadn’t played it together until two hours before, it always sounded amazing. At least to me. Pachabel’s Canon was the other big-deal piece, and that always came off too, I have no idea how.

So Ben and I will be doing that, and it will either be fantastic (hopefully) or very bad. Ben’s other piece is a fiddle song called Big Walleye Blues. It has all the traditional fiddle-music slides and double stops that Ben loves. In fact, our teacher assigned him The Battle of New Orleans, from the beginning of the book, and he decided that he liked Big Walleye Blues and he was going to learn that as well.

My other piece is Adagio (real original, right?) from Handel’s Fourth Violin Sonata. I think it will be good, but right now I have trouble with dynamics and it’s not as clean as I would like, plus even though I practiced two hours today all my shifts were too low. Last year I played the first two movements of Handel’s Third Sonata and they went really well, so I have a reputation to uphold with this one. Slow music takes a lot more patience to learn, unfortunately. I’m also supposed to work on “expression”. Hah.

Orchestra…

was not too bad, actually!

It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t absolutely horrible either, and it was better than last year’s. Especially the recognition. Dad and Ben took many pictures, of course, and you can really tell who took which ones. All of Dad’s are of…big suprise here…the orchestra! Whereas with Ben, some are of the orchestra, and there are also about twenty of the empty stage, the lighting and sound room, the program, Dad’s chin, etc.

This is the string orchestra. I’m on the end on the far far left, dressed like a waiter.

Actually, everybody is required to dress like waiters…in fact, when the drama club put on “Hello Dolly”, they used the orchestra cummerbunds for the waiter accessories.

 My mother told me that my tie was off. She also redid the senior speech.

And the seating.

And the dress code.

And everybody’s posture.

And so on.

This photo is of just me, and Michael, and the girl on Michael’s other side, and if you squint you can just see a bit of Anthony’s head. I’m sitting really really straight…come to think of it,I’ve been told that I play like a robot and I need to be more expressive. “Hug the note!” was the exact phrase.  And people have told me I look like I’m in pain when I play.

So what I really look like is a waiter in severe pain, playing Beethoven’s fifth.

 

 

And Two And ONE…

High school orchestra: three words that strike fear in the hearts of anyone with ears.

And it’s our concert tomorrow night! I’m chair number 5, not bad but better than I expected considering how well I played in the audition, and I sit pretty much exactly where I sit in the band concert, so if I screw up, everyone notices. The only good thing about this chair is: a) it’s the top of my grade, and b) I don’t have to turn any pages.

 

We will be butchering playing many famous recognizable pieces, including Beethoven’s Fifth. This is actually the piece I’m worst at, I believe. In the words of my friend, “It’s going to sound like a cat got stuck in a piano!”.

Our opener is Russian Easter Overture, by Rimsky-Korsakov, I think, but my folder’s at the school so I can’t check. It has about four solos, all of which I’m trying out for in the hopes that I’ll get one. There are 8 people who also want them, so I figure I have a fifty percent chance of succeeding.  This song is very repetitive, and it’s also fourteen pages long.

The next song on the program is (guess what!) Disney Classics! I think that pretty much speaks for itself.

Then we have three more strings-only songs, in one of which I have a sort-of solo moment (he’s having the first six people come in one at a time, and then chairs seven-twenty join them.)

Our symphony opener is Russian Sailor’s Dance, which is extremely famous and featured in many beginner books as a way of teaching staccato. Other notable songs include Beethoven’s Fifth (“and two and one”), Pirates of the Caribbean (“It’s the same damn melody over and over for four pages!”), and Mussorgsky’s Promenade and the Great Gate of Kiev (“Kiev. Isn’t that chicken?”). (Quotes thoughtfully provided by various random orchestra friends)

Our closer will be Lord of the Dance, which is fun.

 

Hopefully, it will not go too badly.

music is my entire life…

From about three weeks ago until mid-June, at least. School has been sort of on a break….in the last week i have: practiced (of course!), done occasional chemistry and French, and managed to do quite a bit of Latin during downtime in the orchestra room.

My band concert was last night, the climax of months and months of rehearsals, and, as predicted, astoundingly mediocre! Actually, mr. swinehart said it was one of the best concerts he’s ever heard this band do, so either it was better than i thought or the band is usually worse. Apparently all three groups are on an upswing this year (according to the teacher, who might be a little bit biased….) and that rarely happens. Dad got numerous photos, in most of which I’m either looking away or talking, plus i am sooo pale that under the stage lights i look ill, so i won’t share them right now. mom has decreed that i will be wearing makeup to the orchestra concert next week, because “Ryan is no tanned person himself, but you made him look like he just spent a week in Florida!”. i personally would rather just make Casie and Joe look tanned, but i already have to wear a cummerbund, so…..

If anyone is curious, the hat this year was Mickey Mouse.

Speaking of which (actually, we weren’t speaking of this, but i want to share it and “speaking of which” is a nice segway, don’t you think?) i got my audition results back, and I’m fifth out of twenty, which is not great but not bad either (top 25%!), and better than i expected considering that i had to start one song over and my cumulative score was 160/200. I’m the highest freshman.

This week is insanely filled with my concert, Ben’s concert, practicing for the concerts, half-day rehearsals for the concerts, on-stage rehearsals for the concerts, possibly school, and on and on. then once the concerts are over we have the recital to prepare for and I’m filling in for the school quartet.

So, i guess that this post is just a really long excuse for not blogging as often as i want to.

 

A Very, Very Important Question

Is it weird if you keep all your music sorted by type and then in alphabetical order? For example: all orchestra music goes in your folder, where it is sectioned according to ensemble and then a-z; sheet music is organized by Christmas, fiddle music, etc, and then alphabetized, and so on.

Or is that perfectly normal and everyone else is a slob?

Because apparently some people think that’s strange. However, some of those same people tend never to be able to find anything. So perhaps, organization is good?

What about if you also keep your schoolbooks in alphabetical order? Is that abnormal?

Help please.

 

 

Mea Culpa

I know, I haven’t posted in over a week. It’s been busy, on top of which Sophie watched the Sound of Music last week and my brain has decided that instead of thinking rational thoughts it will just play the soundtrack over and over.  It is shocking, but I actually know all of the words to “Sixteen Going on Seventen” and “Edelweiss” and “The Clock in the Hall”.

I am really not wanting to do school this week…grrrrr. Ben just finished his math and will not stop bragging about it. Plus I can’t play my horn this week cause the string on the back of the second valve wore out. PLUS in orchestra (or as swinehart calls it “orch”, which somehow to me says, “dork”) we are doing the Disney Classics MedleyFrom Hell. If I have to play It’s a Small World After All again I might die. In the band version of Disney Classics there are at least three different styles of playing that song, including polka and mariachi. Who exactly came up with the idea of mariachi It’s a Small World? Not to mention putting it in a piece of music that they will sell at exorbitant prices to high school band directors? And including in that music such annoying repetitive songs classics as “You Can Fly” and “Zip a dee Do Dah”? And were they drunk at the time? I need to know.

I don’t mind the band Disney music as much though because I hardly have to play; it’s mostly either rests, keeping-the-beat kind of notes, or Ryan Solo notes (there is a ridiculous number of horn solos. Most of them only last one note. I actually have one. I play four notes. Over two measures. It will be the highlight of my career I’m sure.) , but I’ll definitely be glad when this trip is over. Only 25 more rehearsals until our concert, so that’s only 10 rehearsals for me. Then there’s the recital, at which I will be playing half of the Bach Double because I somehow lost my mind and agreed to polish it up for my brother. Also a slow extremely finicky Handel Sonata.

 

I know that this is incredibly boring and you probably aren’t reading it anymore. My life will revolve around music and school for the next two months. I’m sorry. Coming tomorrow (I promise): Ethel the Singing Cow.

Orchestra today….

Public Service Announcement: This is one of those semiboring posts about other people’s everyday lives. Feel free to skip it.

I have decided to join the orchestra! Today I went in to talk to Mr. Swinehart and play for him. As per his request I played something I had perfected. I chose the Seitz concerto no.5. Do you think it’s cheating if you’ve known it since you were ten? I also brought in some stuff I was working on, and we played that. Then I sightread some things from the recent orchestra concert, which went suprisingly well. Sightreading is not usually one of my strong points.

I found out that he does blind auditions with Mr. Pauling, which I’m very happy about. I think that will make it quite fair. Actual auditions for sections will be in two weeks. Apparently I have to learn a two octave scale (easy peasy) (Is it dorky to say easy peasy? It sounds like something Rachael Ray would say.) and then sightread a short piece. Keep your fingers crossed!

Question: Why on earth do we twist our fingers together to signify hopefulness/good luck? Doesn’t that seem strange?