Auditions: The Inside Scoop

     An audition day is a great and terrible thing. All of the practicing you have done is about to come to a head. Everything you have worked for comes down to ten minutes in front of five people. It is the best day and the worst day of your life.
     You wake up groggily, having often spent a sleepless night tossing and turning in your hard bed. A great deal of pillow-punching often occurs, as do wild thoughts of hopping a train to Alberquerque.
     Breakfast awaits in the form of soggy cereal and curdled milk. After ironing your wrinkled dress shirt, and wrestling on your pantyhose (a bout that ends in a knockout after three minutes), you open up your instrument case. Just as you are about to play the first note, your parent bellows up the stairs, "Time to gooooo!!" You carefully pack up your instrument, then start downstairs only to trip over your high heels and end up with a run in your stocking.
     In the car, your parent misreads the directions and turns left when he/she should have turned right. You arrive at the audition exactly four minutes before your warm-up time, and throw yourself out of the car before it has stopped. Your hair elastic breaks.
     Squinting at the directional signs (which all appear to be written in some combination of Swahili and pig-latin), you locate the registration room, feverishly sign your name and then look about for a ladies room. The only one in the building turns out to be three flights of stairs up, so you gather up your things and slog up the stairs. Apparently fifty other girls have had the same idea, and there is a traffic jam in the bathroom. After a good deal of pinching and scratching, you fight your way to a mirror and quickly repair the damage. It is all broken again on the way out of the door, but at this point you have about eight minutes left of your warm-up time.
     The practice rooms send out a din to equal three herds of cattle stampeding, but you find the one room that is empty. It is located between a screeching soprano and a groaning clarinet. You quickly unpack, and run through the most difficult spots in your piece. There is an air-conditioning vent blowing ice-cold air (in December?!?), so you have to keep re-tuning.
     Two minutes before your audition time arrives, you pack up and head out the door. The building is a labrynth, and your walk turns into a trot and then a full-speed-ahead gallop as you race to the audition room. You arrive panting, hair streaming and skirt flapping, only to find that three people are standing outside the door as calm and collected as caterpillars. They eye you coldly. You ask if the judges are running late, and three heads condescend to nod to you. Subdued, you find the nearest available corner and stand in it, running through your piece in your head.
      An unidentified person leaves the audition room, and Caterpillar A goes in. Strains of an impossibly difficult concerto come through the door. Caterpillar A comes out, smiling smugly. Your heart sinks. Caterpillar B disappears through the door. One of the most complex pieces known to man is heard through the door. You swallow convulsively. Positive thoughts, you tell yourself. Caterpillar B smiles smugly as he exits. Caterpillar C is lost from sight, and shortly you hear an impossibly difficult concerto and one of the most complex pieces known to man. You stagger and reel. Caterpillar C has left, and it is now your turn.
     The door creaks as you enter. The room is small, filled with many august personages who sit staring at you through pince-nez. They inquire your name. You reply, and announce your piece. They nod graciously, and you wipe your sweaty palms on your skirt. You take a deep breath, and begin. Your sound is thin and wavering, you screech appallingly on the high notes and miss most of the difficult parts. The piece seems to drag and rush by turns. Finally you are finished. The August Personages nod again, and you leave the room.
     Greatly in need of comfort and refreshment, you head toward the spot where you last saw your parent. You find instead a being with clenched jaws and bloodshot eyes. It greets you with sighs of relief, and immediately pounces with a million questions of "How did it go? Did the part in measure so-and-so go right? Did you remember blah-de-blah in measure thingummy? Who was before you? What did they play? I've been sweating it out here waiting for you, I'll tell you that much!" Somehow you survive the grilling.
     You head home, and collapse on the bed falling into an exhausted sleep. And you know what? The worst part is yet to come. Waiting and waiting and waiting.



To be truthful I must confess that what I have written above is not at all accurate. Mostly. Everyone at the auditions was so helpful and friendly--it was way less scary than I was expecting. And I know that the Lord will have me wherever He wants me and wherever I will give glory to Him. And that's all I need. :)

SYS Youth Talent Winner

The Springfield Youth Symphony has a concerto competition every year for its members. Basically, if you sign up, you play a piece for the judges and they pick two contestants to get to play their piece with the orchestra for the end-of-year concert. I participated this year, and although I didn't win, still had an amazing experience. Here is one guy who did win, and blew us all away with his amazing ability. The video doesn't do his performance justice, but it's still pretty cool.

Jazz Love

So, in orchestra we have been working on the "pops" bit of the semester and this year Dr. Dissmore said that our program would be entitled: "Jazz Meets the Orchestra". Humph, I thought, this will be interesting. I mean, I know what jazz is. It's funky music played by weirdos that has no real rhyme or rhythm. And Mom and Chrissy like it; enough said. Or so I thought.

We get about two weeks into rehearsals, and I discover that I really had no idea whatsoever about jazz. It's really fun stuff! I feel all warm and happy inside, and I want to tap my feet. And there are some moments when I even want to twirl around in a swirly skirt under the moon! Jazz music slides and sways; some bits are very lush and smooth (think fudge or pearls), while others tickle your toes so much you have to stand up and move!

There is a set rhythm, only it never sounds that way because when you play jazz music you smoosh it and pull it and stretch it and squeeze it and shake it, so that it doesn't really sound to have rhythm at all. One of the directors, Mrs. Whouton, said there was a whole new language that jazz people  used when referring to the rhythm. Apparently it consists of "doos" and "dats" and "dits" (there was one more but I forgot it).

Speaking of jazz people, we have a jazz trio, the Jacob Hiser Trio, coming to play a few pieces with us. They are an electric bass (oh so cool! I want one), some drums, and a piano. They sound really neat, and it's fun to see "real" (jazz trio verus classical orchestra attempting to play jazz) jazz played. My seat is the perfect spot for watching the drums and the bass during our 23-measure rests. I found out that the "shushing" noise is made by brushing the drums! The drummer takes two brushes that look like paint brushes with a twisted wire loop at the end, and sweeps them across the drum, smooshing the bristles down really far. And sometimes he turns them over and swipes the wire loop across a cymbal, which makes a smooth, bright noise.

Anywho, we are having our concert in approximately 4 days, and I was never so excited about an orchestra concert before! Which I suppose isn't saying much, considering that I've only had one other. But I definitely am going to have tons of fun.

So I guess the moral of this post is, never ever condemn anything until you've found out what it really is. Not to say that you couldn't condemn Chinese chicken foot soup, but that's beside the point. One never knows what something that appears weird might turn out to be. You might find a new love! (Except chicken foot soup, that's pretty self-explanatory)

What's up Doc?

WOW it's been a long time! I guess my life lately could be best described by a VeggieTales song: "Busy, busy, dreadfully busy, you've no idea what we have to do! Busy, busy, dreadfully busy, much much too busy for you!" School, orchestra, school, job, school, and did I mention school? Here's a condensed picture of my life in the past few months. :)

 My job!! As an earlier post details, to make money I have been playing downtown in front of Dick's 5&10. The first several times I was extremely nervous, and I still am sometimes, but I have grown to love it. It is so rewarding to see the smiles on people's faces when I play a familiar song, and the pay helps too! :-)

For Suzy's birthday we went as a family to see Tangled, in 3D!! I personally had never seen a movie in 3D before, and it was pretty cool. That aside, I have started a mission to have the whole world go see this movie. It's that great. Now, to uphold my image as a bored-by-everything-that-involves-people-under-the-age-of-12 teenager, I wasn't expecting very much. But it totally defied all my expectations; a super cute movie. I wouldn't mind seeing it again! And, as a plus, it had some really great musical numbers--bonus points!! Seriously, go buy a ticket and see it. :-)

November 30th was my very first orchestra concert ever. It also marked the end of my first semester in the Springfield Youth Symphony. We played lots of well-known pieces: Bach's Tocatta and Fugue in D minor, the Polotsvian Dances No. 17, Sleigh Ride, two movements from Beethoven's 5th, and a few "smaller" pieces. Everything went positively swimmingly until the very last movement in the Beethoven, which was the second to last piece on the program. Now in rehearsals I was/am not very good at counting rests, coming in too late usually and having to race to catch up. But during the concert I hadn't missed a single one and was feeling so pleased with myself (uh huh, pride goeth before a fall, surely!). We came to the last page of the last movement-which was super fun to play-everything was getting ready for the big finale, whennnn......wecametotheverylastrestandIplayedone-halfabeattooearly. There. It's out. Although it probably is rather difficult for you to read what I just said, so I'll say it slower. *clears throat* We came to the very last rest right before the Big Note and I played one-half a beat too early. Yep. Major fail. And of course, I played it the way it was supposed to be played: very loud and long, so the end note instead of being one whole note, was a quarter and a whole note. I'm sure I'll laugh about this someday. But, it was a very good learning experience and I will never do it again. End of story. :-)

Above is the only video I could find on Youtube of us; the video quality is rather bad, but the sound is nice. It's an excerpt from Jubilee, conducted by the fantabulous Carla Wooton.

Welll, there ya have it! A lot more has happened in our house, but I'm out of time for today. Guess you'll have to wait with baited breath.....

La Folia

Finally, the day has arrived! I have started learning to play La Folia!! As you can tell, I am super excited. :-) Below is a music video of La Folia that some fellow violin students made last summer. They had a lot of fun making it, and I have a lot of fun watching it.