Everything Is Practice: Recent Episodes
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Sight-reading Day 79 Today, Jamie and I had our last rehearsal before we play in the Sonia Rubinsky masterclass tomorrow! We mainly went over more general stuff like checking tuning, cues, breathing spots, etc.. We also kind of addressed our expectations for the performance itself; while we both felt good about the Convocation performance, we […]
Sight-reading 78 Today, I had my piano lesson with Dr. Vlahcevic. We covered the third movement of Barber’s excursions, the first two pages of Barber 4, the first movement of Beethoven (no. 17, op. 32 no. 2) , and then my Debussy prelude (Sunken Cathedral) for recital. I was surprised by how together Barber III […]
Sight-reading Day 77 Today, Jamie and I performed the first movement of Hector Villa-lobos Fantasia for Bb Soprano saxophone & orchestra (piano reduction) in convocation. It was my first time ever accompanying an instrumentalist before, and the experience was very satisfying but also kind of odd. I noticed I wasn’t as nervous before going onstage […]
Sight-reading Day 76 Today, I picked back up the last movement of Barber, and managed to finish memorizing the first two pages (roughly all of theme 1 and half of theme 2). My goal will be to play that much for my next lesson and then have it all memorized for the lesson after recital. […]
Sight-reading Day 75 Today, I continued working on movement 1 of the Fantasia for Bb soprano saxophone by Hector Villa-lobos. This time, I worked backwards from the last phrase to the middle B section (where I left off yesterday). There isn’t as much dynamic activity going on in these later sections as there is in […]
Sight-reading Day 74 Today, in preparation for me and Jamie’s convocation performance on Tuesday, I spent most of the day polishing the piano part of our piece, the Villa-lobos Fantasia for Bb Soprano saxophone. The primary target today was dynamics; I started in the A section, working slowly through each phrase but paying super attention […]
Sight-reading Day 73 Today, I continued working on the fourth movement of the Excursions. I started with the first two phrases, just working on gaining fluency and coordination between my hands while building tempo with each successive cycle. I worked this way up through to the end of theme I, then began learning the right […]
Sight-reading Day 72 Today, I began the final movement of Samuel Barber’s Excursions for piano. I’ve put a lot of work into the third movement this semester, and though I’m still not done with the polishing work, I feel comfortable enough to finally move on to the fourth movement. After an initial read through of […]
Sight-reading Day 71 Today, I had a pretty good lesson with Dr. Vlahcevic. We covered my Bach (prelude and fugue) as well as the Beethoven sonata. While I went for my run later, I listened back to the audio recording I made of our lesson and decided to put down the notes Dr. V gave […]
Sight-reading Day 70 Today, I continued the polishing work for the first movement of my Beethoven Sonata. I would like to perform this piece for the Hermitage recital and perhaps for the McGuire Hospital performance as well. After doing metronome/tempo work for about 35 minutes, I decided to give myself a test with a mock […]