playing to the audience

Tonight, I performed at my school's Classical Me, a biannual concert for musicians at my high school! My private teacher doesn't organize recitals, so it's really nice to have a regular performance that isn't as stressful as auditions and helps me practice performing. The acoustics in the church are amazing, so it's a great place to perform and listen to other musicians! To read more about Classical Me and watch one of my performances from last year, click here.

I played Meditation from the opera Thais, by Jules Massenet. I love this piece; it's so beautiful and expressive. Here is a video of the performance:

I was fortunate to have my friend Hanalei accompany me! She's an amazing pianist! She organizes a music group at my school called Songs For Seniors that performs at senior homes around the county. We have concerts every month, and it's so much fun! It's really rewarding to see the residents enjoying the music and tapping along.

Our first performance of the school year was at The Village at Rockville in November. The person at the front desk asked us if we were all from the same family... They must not see many Asians. Or maybe all Asians look alike when holding string instruments.

The January performance was at the Brooke Grove Retirement Village. There was a good crowd of residents and their families. Later, I found out that one resident's family member once taught music. It was nice to be appreciated by someone who knew about music, and it might have made up for the fact that one resident asked me what instrument I play right after the performance.

This month, we performed at Sunrise at Fox Hills in February. The ambiance was a combination of a 4-star hotel and a minimum security prison. It was impossible to get to the concert room without a security escort! All the electronic locks were designed to keep residents from wandering out, but also to keep late musicians from getting to the concert.

it's all about classical me

Classical me. Classical you. Classical who? Classical Me is a chance for musicians at my high school to perform every semester in front of... their parents. Okay, I'll admit, among the crowd of parents, there are also some siblings, classmates, and the three school music teachers. But that's what I love about it. There isn't anything at stake, like there is at an audition, but it still mimics that horrible, anxious feeling you get every time you perform. Cold, clammy hands that make it impossible to play the violin, shaky knees, butterflies. It really is just wonderful. Apparently that feeling wears off as you perform more. Although, I am pretty sure my sister's cello teacher just said that to convince us to play at the next recital.

This was the second time I performed at Classical Me. I played Bach's Partita No. 3. The only rests are the very first eighth note and the very last one. So technically, there are no breaks for four whole pages of music. Not to mention that those four pages are virtually all sixteenth notes. Perhaps that's why I was so nervous.

My first Classical Me performance was in the second semester last year. I played Praeludium and Allegro, composed by Kreisler, and I was the only freshman! But, this year, many other people in my grade performed. That's probably because sophomores, juniors, and seniors can get honors credit for music class by performing at Classical Me and writing a music-related paper each semester. I wrote mine about the effects of music on the brain. I'm pretty proud of it. There was even a labelled picture of my own brain. :)

Here is a video of my performance. It has nice sound quality, since my parents recently invested in a microphone for videotaping. I played in the second half, fifth to last. While watching all the other performances, I had to continuously warm my hands up, then cool them down again. Like I was saying before, I hate cold, clammy hands. Luckily, when it was my time to perform, my hands were the perfect temperature.

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!

got hope, but wish i could vote

hi everyone!

sorry that i'm not keeping very up to date on my blogging... but for my birthday, on january 23, my family and i went to manhattan, new york, where i was born. we walked a lot and it was freezing cold which was a bad combination. my legs basically went numb if i walked for more than 7 blocks. the bagels at Ess-a Bagels were really yummy. we trekked 14 blocks each way from the hotel to get them. it was worth it though. weirdly, i felt VERY lucky to ride the subway, where my legs could thaw. but... in some of the subway stations, the escalators were broken, so we had to climb about 10 flight of stairs (over 100 steps, maybe 200). also in the subway station, that was much more dreadful, was a man who was playing violin to get some money. but it was the equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. after we passed, my mom whispered, "you're WAY better than he is." and i was like, "um, YA!"
my dad and i saw the musical, "legally blonde." i thought the acting and dancing were really good but the songs weren't very original. most of the songs had "ooooh my god" in their lyrics. during this time, my mom and sister were at m and m world admiring m and m's dressed like the statue of liberty and saturday night fever's tony manero. there was even a scanner that told u what color m and m u are. when i was at the musical my mom and sister also went to the american girl doll store for the 2nd time that weekend.

we went to a store with gigantic stuffed animals and lots of candy called FAO Schwarz. there were really big pink stuffed dogs lined across the wall, twenty foot tall dragons and life-sized mythical creatures from the harry potter novels that were really freaky... to me at least (i'm easily scared.) there were also some people who were dancing on a keyboard mat. it was actually really impressive that they could jump on notes together, so from that you could tell that they had to be working for the store and weren't just kids playing for fun.
for my birthday i got a 2nd DDR dance mat from my cousins. and i got a digital recorder from my parents. it's a really good gift for me because i can record how my violin and quartet sound.

i've been playing a lot of violin lately especially because i've been playing with a quartet for the solo and ensemble festival next month. the music on its own isn't difficult, but when we play as quartet it's hard to stay together because we play at different speeds on our own pieces. i cue the quartet, as to when to start playing, with the scroll of my violin. but not just that, but i get the "honor" of sniffing (loudly) a beat before we start because our cellist can't see me since my stand is in the way. my quartet is going to play minuetto by bach for the festival. so sometimes my mom and i say "you bach!" as a pun on "you rock!" i haven't decided yet what solo piece to play though. i'll probably do either a bach minuet in G or a baccarini piece.

i was really excited because i got to see obama speak at the comcast center, at the university of maryland on february 11, the day before the maryland primaries. my mom, my sister and i were walking down the line of people, and i was amazed at how long it went. every time we turned a corner, there were more people standing there. the line had to be about 2 miles, literally. it snaked from the comcast, over the hill, past the parking garage, across the footbridge and past the rec center. the line probably went further than that, but luckily we saw someone we knew waiting in line. she told us that the police officer told her she was at the halfway point. we stood with her for about 10 minutes, then we were able to return the favor by bringing her into the arena early when the officers let us bypass the line and go in a side door because our party had kids in it. we got pretty good seats where we could actually see his face. we waited in the arena for about 3 hours before obama actually came to speak. while we were waiting, about 2 hours before his speech, "cheerleaders" kept chanting and trying to get people to cheer. all fired up! ready to go! (it gets very annoying after a while). i think that obama's a good speaker and the speech was really inspiring. it was a great experience seeing him live and hearing him speak. i really like when he said "things now aren't how they have to be. it's time to turn the page." i hope he wins the most delegates so he can run in the presidential election. i like his message in how he wants to change things. if i was 18, i'd vote for barack obama.

beatriz

ps. my best post this year!!

tom pyle = beating the crap outta me

hi everyone,

sorry that i haven't blogged for such a long time. but, in the last week or two, i have basically gotten a lot of homework and projects, and missed the bus a lot. i actually once, fell asleep in reading class... but is it really my fault? the lights were off because of the overhead, i was tired, and my reading teacher is kinda boring. besides, it was only about 10/90 minutes that i was asleep for. the homework assignments have been pretty basic, such as, write a concrete poem based on foundations, or do problems 1-20 on page 647 in your text book. but all these projects are wearing me out. i have finished my data display project (looking at teens and sleep. i am a perfect example), a personal timeline project, but still have to work on my author biography. i have missed my bus home about 50% of the school days so far because my bus is always first. except, i always manage to catch another bus that stops about half a block away from my house.
the music in my band class has been very simple. but since my mom and my friend's mom commented about it to my teacher, my friend simone and i played for her yesterday. she played sarabande in d minor which was pretty complicated, and i played ashokan farewell. so, we now have some new music to practice, that the 7th and 8th grade orchestra are playing so we can play it in the concert along with them.
i actually got my gym uniform on friday. they had to order ones for the "small people" because they didn't have anymore. so mine came late. i was really excited... until i put it on. baggy shorts and a giant t-shirt. which is SO not my style =/.
this morning, i woke up really dizzy, so when i got up from bed... i fell straight down onto my nose :(. but, my mom thinks it is because i need more iron and stuff. but, i feel unstable when i walk which is getting annoying. my mom thinks that's because i need more calcium.

beatriz