NYC

Dear all
I am in New York city.
I have been rehersing Bach's St Matthew's passion like crazy.
I am super busy and tired.
I canceled going to dinner with my voice teacher, I think this made him very sad.
Feeling guilty about this.
The singing rocks though
Hopefully won't ruin voice for suncay audition.
Better post I promise laters

cello!!!!

so looking at the bridge of my cello is like a string player horrer flick. The bridge is warped beyond any reasonable....something....it's quite warped. It is currently sitting under some books, I'm hoping it can be reasonable persuaded to comply, otherwise Ima have to try this crazy boil bake technique I've heard about.
In other sad news when I took off my bridge the sound post fell.
My cello is having some serious issues. I guess that's what I get for not playing it for over a year. (give me a break I've been very busy, it is difficult to study two instruments in a serious capacity)
Anyhow I'm playing in the middle east ensemble, hopefully I'll be able to stick with it, because it is challengeing in all the cool exciting ways with out the mean pressure of being in a bigger orchestra.

lies, and the met

so the whole posting more because I'm on vacation thing turned out to be a big fat lie.
How 'bout that.
I just don't want to bore people with "I ate a lot of cheese today"

I can tell you about a few things though:

I listened but did not go to the met broadcast. did not go to a broadcast embly what ever do you mean?
well for those of you not in the loop Peter Gelb the new artistic (correct me if I'm wrong) director at the Metropolitan Opera has been looking for ways to create a larger "fan base" if you will for the opera, thusly he has decided to broadcast productions live, not merely to NPR listeners, but in High Definition to a movie theater near you! (look I fixed the whole Html thing, I've surprised myself twice in the last 24 hours in my ability to manipulate Html, of which I know nothing) So the broadcast on Saturday was of the magic flute, a special shortened English language version. It was a lot of fun to listen to! It brought me back to listening to classical kids as, well a kid! Except in classical kids they become friends with the scary serpent monster from the opening scene and he then provides comic relief for the rest of the story "oh bats! bats! I hate bats! They get in my hair!" "Ummm you don't have any hair" Hilarious!!!!
Anyhow it was fun, it was a little strange to hear it in English. I can not say anything to the HD success because I did not go, but I think that I shall try to go sometime with my friends, I think there are 3 people I can convince!

Now for a bit of personal info:
I am entering a really crazy couple of weeks, I'm flying really early out to Chicago tomorrow for the first week of classes. I then return to the east coast to spend a week in NYC where I'm singing in a workshop (paid!) and I have (hopefully) two auditions. It is all tremendously exciting and also crazy, it makes me want to not do it almost just thinking about it.
But I shall and I shall triumph!

::WARNING RANT::

OK so this is the rant that my mother was so lucky as to witness the other day as we drove down to meet my grandmother for her museum Christmas party.

We were listening to NPR and there was a piece on the best album of the year. ooo! thinks I, NPR frequently has an interesting view on what musicians are currently influencing music and such.

The best album of the year folks? a compilation of old 45 singles that this company put out of Motown. What?!
come on!
how pretentious do we have to be? the best album of the year was a compilation of music that was originally put out 40- 50 years ago? so...there was no music worth any interest that was put out this year by current composers?

That's crap, NPR that's crap!

Now I love NPR, and the article was really interesting and something that I genuinely wanted to listen to, but as the best album put out this year?

What I want to hear about is who is saving Hip-Hop from its commercial demise? what group is changing the sound of indie rock? who is taking the folk/bluegrass community by storm. I mean it's still NPR, they're still going to report on some no-name band that only a select few will have ever heard of and then these same people will pissed off that NPR went off and ratted on their musical secret (allot of people by records off of NPR recommendations, I know because this one time I was doing just that...heard an awesome review said 'wow I would like to own that CD' dashed off to Borders and subsequently couldn't find it. The clerk there told me that they always get a rush of customers for albums after an article is run on them by NPR) but still despite the pretension that I expected, to decide that the best album of the year was comprised of music written years ago is complete malarkey.

Now I know and revere old music, but I don't even expect them to say that a new recording of a classical work is the best album of the year. I mean it would be interesting to see what they think the best classical recording of the year is, but that's a different piece entirely.

anyway that's all I have to say on the matter, NPR should have found a contemporary group to review for album of the year. This piece was great I did want to hear it, just in a more apropos context.

grrr you tube

so I've been trying to get http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM this...why can't I link words anymore? grr beta blogger you are not helpful in the least...the old one inserted all the technical info in parentheses so then you could make the link whatever word you wanted...in this case I wanted the word to be "this".
Whatever.
"This" see gobblygook above is a rant about PAchabel's canon from youtube...

but embly why didn't you post the video straight to your blog like last time?

well I tried several times, but it didn't work....hah! maybe it's because I switched to beta..??...

I'll work on that.

anyhow I've made this rant before...I mean he's alittle harsh on all the chord structures being the same...I mean it's only the second favorite sequence of all time...composeres they like sequences...they make things easy...key changes....or like pachabel's canon, they allow for a cyclic song...




heee!!! see what I did there? cyclic song is the name of my blog you see, so it's funny!

crossed a finish line

phew!!! I finished. Somehow all of the finals are done. Sadly I still have applications due...also I have lots of music to learn.

Last night I went to see Romeo et Juliette by Gonoud. My body is finally getting sick after clinging to wellness for the last month or so, so I have to admit that first and foremost it felt very long. Isn't that awful? I was just too tired and achy to really get into the love duets and such, I guess last night was just not the right night for me to see this opera.

the Tenor was fantastic, his voice was really phenomanal, light when it needed to be and totally dramatic at other points. He was also quite an actor, obviously he played giddy in love easier than other more wrenching parts but he did quite a fine job throughout.

The soprano was very good, and yet, dispite my displeasure in saying this, was only just that. She sang everything as you wanted her to, all the musical decisions were perfect and yet I wanted something more.

Perhaps I'm being hyper-critical, but that's just the impression that I was left with. That's all for now though I'm sure posting will suddenly increase now that I'm on vacation!

old music

Sorry for a certain lack of posting, I'm pretty much up to my ears in work. I have to be ready for a drop the needle style test on early music, also with definitions and essays on the readings that I have been consistantly not doing. When you don't need them for class it is hard to convince one self to do them. Of course there is also a paper for this class, though I'm not thinking about that because I have about a week to write that.
though I do have a paper on Il Barbieri di Siviglia that should be done for Tuesday. Though that should pull through.
Also I have been sending out applications, making recordings all the things involved with that. I have two concerts coming up.
And planning all the music that I have to learn over break.

so sorry for just talking about my life. I have a more interesting things to talk about when I have some time.