music to my ears

Yesterday, I performed at the concert for the Senior Montgomery County Honors Orchestra! The senior orchestra is for grades 10-12, and the junior one is for grades 7-9. I'm in 10th grade now, so I just moved up!

For all-county, there's usually about a month of rehearsals before the concert. I love playing with the orchestra! Since the skill level is higher than that of my school orchestra, we can spend more time focusing on the musical aspects of the music, instead of the technical aspects, such as intonation and timing. It definitely makes rehearsal more interesting! Each year, the whole experience is so much fun and definitely makes me a better orchestra player.

This year, I had the honor to be the concertmaster! It was one of the best experiences to lead such a great orchestra. :)

Here is a video that my parents took of our performance:

This is the program with the approximate time that it begins in the video above:

1. Orange Jam by Jeffrey Bishop (1:10)
2. Air on the G String by J.S. Bach (3:42)
3. Symphony No. 104 "London" 1st mvmt, Adagio-Allegro by F.J. Hadyn (7:56)
4. Romanian Folk Dances by Béla Bartók (15:40)

Conducted by Mrs. Kathy Cammarata

summer of music

last week, i went to the orchestra camp at the university of maryland, called SYMC. i have loyally attended the camp for five consecutive summers now!

this was the first year that ella could do the camp, and it was also my last year. so, sadly, this was our only chance to go together. we got to have orchestra rehearsals and world drumming class together! plus, ella got me to carry her cello around...

as always, they had spirit days every day of the week. i will never be able to top the crazy hair day from my third summer at SYMC! it attracted so much staring and pointing... i have a picture of it in this post! i was only 12 years old!

after the auditions on monday, i found out that i was the concertmaster! it was an amazing way to end my time at the camp. i was a little nervous for the concert, since i had a solo in one piece, but it went really well and i was relieved!

here are some pictures of me and ella at the concert.

and here is a recording of one of the songs we played, which has my solo. it is called celtic roots by soon hee newbold.

high school music scene

last night, i performed my first concert with whitman, which also marked my first concert as a concertmistress! it was really exciting, yet nerve-racking, because i walked out to tune the orchestra and even introduced one of our pieces!

at whitman, there are two orchestras and four bands, including the jazz band.

• i'm in the concert orchestra. it is mainly for freshies, so it is teeny tiny: 5 first violins, 5 second violins, 2 violas, 3 cellos (2 of which usually come late to class or just skip it all together), and 3 basses.
  
• concert band is mainly freshman as well. for some reason, they are the only group that didn't buy the dresses or borrow the school tuxes.
  
• the symphonic band and the wind ensemble are both bands for sophomores, juniors, and seniors. the wind ensemble is the highest level though. like my mom, you may be wondering: why in the world is it called the wind ensemble when it actually includes brass instruments? well, i'm sort of wondering that too.
  
• the higher level orchestra, the symphonic orchestra, is much bigger since it includes the sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
  
• last of all is the jazz band. it has the best trumpet, trombone, and saxophone players at the school, plus a rhythm section.
  

the groups performed in that order which to be blunt... is from worst to best.

it was awkward being the first group to perform. everyone was still talking as i started walking onto the stage. that was most likely because the lights in the audience only turned off in the middle of our performance. pretty bad, right?

after the rest of the orchestra was seated, i walked out from stage left, bowed to the audience, and played my A string for the orchestra to tune! sounds minor, i know, but it was quite a rush. notice my newly tailored dress!

our selection order was as follows:

1. Hanukkah Lights................ Barry Amass
2. Dance Suite.......................... W.A. Mozart
3. Silent Night.......................... Franz Gruber

i'm guessing that ms. alvey purposefully chose both a christian and jewish piece for us to perform. smart. maybe dance suite was meant to be the secular piece.

i announced the dance suite. ms. alvey told us that she was "a firm believer in having the kids announce the pieces." she told us during class on the day of the concert that she didn't have time to write our speeches on notecards... so during the school day, i was thinking frantically about what to say: piece or selection? we hope you enjoy it or enjoy? well, i asked a couple of people their opinions, and i think my choices were pretty good.

"The next piece we'll be performing for you tonight is called Dance Suite, composed by Mozart. It has been our most challenging piece this year and is comprised of three movements: Gavotte, Menuet, and Country Dance. We hope you enjoy it."

just for the record, i didn't want to say it was our most challenging piece. ms. butler (my middle school orchestra teacher) used to say that, and i always felt like it was an excuse for bad playing. but... ms. alvey asked me to.

after my performance, i watched the rest of the concert with my family. most people had already left by the end, but i was interested in hearing the other groups. i'm glad i did, because i heard some interesting things. there was even a piece that the symphonic orchestra played called toy symphony where the violists played bird noises (a nightingale, a cuckoo and a quail) instead of their violas. you know, you had to be there.

♫

music marathon

yesterday i went to my second all county orchestra audition (last year's audition). before the audition, i was freaking out. not because i was nervous, but because i didn't have a banana that could prevent an anxiety attack. magnesium is magical. my mom comes home and pulls out 5 bananas! sigh, i love her. she knows me so well.

longest practice period ever
i got to the auditions at 6:55 pm, since i was auditioning in the last block from 7:30-9:00. well, i auditioned at 9:44. people cheered when the numbers changed, literally every 20 minutes.

the reason it was so slow was because there was one room with an etude (2 minutes), one room with sight reading (2 minutes), and one room with 2 excerpts plus 2 scales (5 minutes). so the line for the longest one built up fast. last year was much better thought out. wonder why they changed it...

it was obvious that everyone was getting more exhausted as the night dragged on. at first, everyone was practicing frantically. as we were walking towards the practice room, my mom says, "can you spell cacophony?" which, i can't (i had to use spell check to write that). then, as the room emptied out painfully slowly, there were those long patches of silence which i hate. they make it so hard to practice without seeming like a show off. like, once, there was complete silence with no talking, no playing. and one girl just continued playing the slow piece. everyone laughed but she still continued to play. i'm not sure if she knew she was playing a solo, but i'm pretty sure she knew.

honestly, maybe it was better that they were so late. at first i was really worried since i felt so unprepared. but, after more than 2 hours of practicing, i wasn't nervous at all. was it the banana? was it the practicing? maybe a combination...

me and my mom as the night slowly ticked by:


strangely lucky auditions
mr. herman: he conducted the all-county orchestra last year and described our playing with animal analogies... some about elephants... so, i'm outside the first room (with the etude), and the girl waiting next to me looks into the room and says, "hey! that's my teacher." after i auditioned, i asked her who it was, and she told me it was mr. herman. i asked her how she knew, since the judges were behind screens only showing their feet. "the pants." i'm just glad that she told me after i auditioned.

the sightreading wasn't too bad. they only gave us 30 seconds to look at the music before playing it. i thought that was a little weird, since usually they give us as much time as we need. my mom thinks that they shortened the time because they were 44 minutes after the auditions were supposed to end. the time went by fast, so by that time, i had only looked through half of the piece. luckily i was able to wing it ok (i hope). the rhythm was pretty hard, and we had to shift to 4th position once, but other than that, it was all good. :)

when i went to the last, super long room, there was only one person in line, even though they said the line would take forever. they had the music posted outside the room showing what we would play. it turned out that for the hardest piece, brahms 2nd symphony, we only had to play the last half. half of me felt relieved but half of me was really bugged. i mean, the first half was probably my weaker half, but after all that practicing, we didn't have to play it!

me and my mom left and were like "finally!" we only got home at 10:07 pm. i was half asleep. for the all-state auditions on saturday, my mom says that we could get my number, then go get ice cream or something. :)

i don't think the banana really helps

ever wonder what an all-county orchestra audition in montgomery county, maryland is like? well you're in luck. i looked for this information on the web last fall for my violin audition and found nada! zip! zilch! so insider information right here to help my fellow stringers.

what you play for the auditions: they assign you 3 excerpts a few months ahead of time that are posted on the maryland music educators association website. last year the excerpts for violin were, the reformation symphony, which is technically difficult, an exercise from the 2nd wolfhart book, and a largo piece which included a lot of shifting but needed a lot of character. they say you need to buy the books, but nobody checked if we had the books at the auditions. just a money saving tip for you.
you also have to prepare scales. they want you to practice up to 3 sharps and up to 3 flats with arpeggios, but they only choose one for you to play.
then, there's a sight reading portion. there is a few lines of sightreading that you have to play, which isn't technically difficult, but has some tricky rhythms and a simple shift to 3rd position.

the process: the all county auditions are blind, so go ahead and wear your ratty sweats. but with nice shoes (since you are behind a screen which shows your feet). you'll be given a time window to be at the audition, but you should get there 30-45 min earlier so you can be higher up in the queue for audition order. after you sign in, you go into a big room where 40-50 people are practicing. you have to practice at the same time as them. they have a big screen where they project the audition numbers of who is going next. they project the numbers in groups and by instruments. when they project your number on the screen, you go up to the front of the room where someone leads you and the others to the audition rooms. there are 3 different rooms. when you get to the rooms there are people lined up outside each of the rooms waiting to go in and audition. one of the rooms is sight reading and scales. one is the 2 shorter excerpts and one is the long excerpt. posted outside of the excerpt audition rooms are the sheet music marked with brackets showing what they would like you to play. you can choose which room you want to go into first. when you get into the audition room, you don't speak at all and the judge doesn't speak at all. you only whisper with the judge's helper when you get into the room who will give you cues to play etc. in the excerpt rooms, they already have the music there, but you can use your own music since it has your markings on it.

some advice:in the practice room, you might hear people who play better than you, but you should try not to listen to them because it will psych you out. for example, i heard someone playing one song faster than i had practiced it. and i thought, i'm playing it too slow. in my audition, i ended up speeding up, and messing up. while you aren't playing, you might want to listen to music through headphones... it worked for michael phelps!

during the sightreading portion, give yourself 20-30 seconds to look through the music. don't feel rushed, it doesn't affect your score. spending those seconds will pay off.

during the scales, don't play too fast or too slow. play them at a walking pace. the judges have listened to a lot of scales before yours, so playing them painfully slow won't help.

don't be too nervous...have you ever heard that eating a banana makes you less nervous? well, it sort of does, but it doesn't get rid of the nerves at all. don't be too nervous because, while at the auditions, my mom calculated the chances of getting in. there were about 70 people auditioning for violin, and there were about 35-40 people who made it in. the chances of you getting into the orchestra is more than half! just practice and don't be nervous!

all state orchestra auditions
the all state audition process is very similar to all county, and there are the same excerpts and requirements. the only thing is that it is harder to get into (ex: i made it into all county and not all state), and they are not blind! so dress nice!


please post comments if you have any extra helpful tips or questions! good luck with your audition!

remember december

hi everyone,
at the very beginning of december i went to sportrock with my girl scout troop and we stayed over night. we learned how to belay, put our harness on, and do safety knots. we learned all this by midnight, and then only after that were we allowed to climb. they only turned the lights out at 2:30 am so i stayed up really late. at one point i was belaying a 14 yr old girl and i didn't have an anchor to hold me down to the floor. so when she was coming down the wall, i flew off the ground and my belaying backup was holding my ankle, trying to pull me down. it was so freaky. i thought it would work because one of the people who worked at sportrock did an example like that, but apparently he's much heavier than i am.

about a week into december, i had my first debate. our team was jessica, david and me. for the debate, we met a lot to practice speaking and to get data organized. we went to the debate and we debated four topics, four different teams. for one topic, there should be childcare facilities for all high school students on site. since we were the proposition side, we made our definition, childcare for high school mothers' children. the other team stated that teenage pregnancy is bad, then david stood up and asked him "why is teenage pregnancy bad?" he couldn't think of an answer to that. he didn't say anything for a really long time and the other two girls on his team were writing notes really quickly to him. he couldn't read their writing so he just said "uh, okay?" in the end, we won 7th place team out of about 30 teams.

the next weekend, our girl scout troop and i went to "just cakes" to decorate cookies and cakes. we rolled dough and made it into gingerbread cookies. we decorated them with frosting. we were given cakes to put the frosting on and we decorated them with different colors and shapes of frosting caps. on my cake, i made a green border around the bottom of the cake, a border around the top and a christmas tree in the middle. the bakery smelled like butter and sugar, the things that make food taste so good.

that weekend, i also danced in a hip hop version of the play, a christmas carol. there were 3 shows. we had to stay at the performances for 2 hrs before they even started, basically to just get our make-up and costumes ready, but most of the time we were just sitting around, not allowed to talk. the 2nd and 3rd plays were much better than the first. for one of the dances in the first play, they couldn't find the music, so we had to skip that dance. there was one really big dressing room with a lot of people in it. people were running in and out of the dressing room to get backstage. on the bright side, there was a speaker in the room that connected to the microphones on stage so we could hear the songs and the lines of the actors. it was really fun to dress up as beggars, '80s people, and in christmas colors. we danced the same routines we performed at the walk for the homeless event and the miss teen dc pageant. we also added a few christmas dances into the play.

on tuesday, i performed in our school orchestra/band concert. my friend simone and i played with the 7th/8th grade orchestra. we played "the entrance of the queen of sheba"and "themes from the nutcracker." a few weeks back, i tried out for 6th grade county honors orchestra. we had to play a prepared piece which was really simple, play a few scales, and sight read a piece our orchestra teacher chose. i was excited when i found out that a couple of my friends and i all made honors orchestra. i'm hoping we'll play more complicated pieces than the pieces we play in school orchestra.

very recently, my mom and i made cookies for all my teachers, except for my PE teacher. he said he takes a walk at 5 am everyday so i figured he wouldn't want cookies. we made chocolate chip cookies, shortbread cookies and fudge. the chocolate chip cookies and the shortbread turned out really well. the fudge not so much. we only had enough good pieces to give one per teacher. there were 9 teachers. you'd think we'd know how to make fudge perfectly because i did a science fair project on how lava is like fudge last year. we made a lot of fudge then. we got little christmas tins with snowmen on them (because they're non-denominational) to put our cookies in. i gave gift cards to a few of my teachers, plus my PE teacher.

my next post will probably be from california! land of fun + sun!!

beatriz