Recital Day!

I just finished my very first ever recital where I both play the piano and sing!!  It was so fun!  It went very, very well, for the most part. I am so happy!   I had the recording department tape it, so as soon as I can I will post some videos and/or audio from it!   I had a nice audience with probably about 20 people from church and ten or fifteen people from the conservatory.  I was lucky enough to have FOUR of my dear teachers there tonight -- my piano teacher, Paul, my voice teacher, Jane, my Italian teacher, Brioni, and my voice teacher who drove all the way from Los Angeles, Dennis.  I felt so loved!

      Now it is strange though to be all by myself again in my little room at the dorm. 

     Two very nice friends of mine from church gave me bundles of flowers too. I don't have a vase right now so I cut the top off one of my water jugs and put them in there. They are very beautiful. 

     Tomorrow I have my final jury for my Professional Studies Diploma at the conservatory, at 3:45 in the afternoon. Then I will be really finished with ALL of the requirements for my diploma!  Can you believe it?  This year has gone by soooo fast.

       I'm so excited to see what the future holds in store for me next. :-)

                              Goodnight! 

Concerto!!

I just got an email from the orchestra manager at the conservatory that the dates for my concerto performance have been set... I will have two performances of the concerto next year with the orchestra, on February 11th and 12th.  She told me that I need to plan to be available for two weeks ahead of the performance for rehearsals, which should work out nicely since Paul already told me that I could stay at his house and have lessons before-hand.   That will be so fun!! I'm so excited.   I'm really happy that I get two performances of it, instead of just one.  Usually I always play better on the second night...

Yaaaay!!

new poem

I just finished (I think!) a poem I started a few weeks ago on "Hear Me":

http://jacquelynwrites.blogspot.com/2011/04/darkest-hour.html

Finished!!!!!

I just finished my last final project/presentation for the year!!!  I am so happy!  I wrote a fable last night based on an Italian proverb, and today we all read our stories to each other, and discussed our plans with each other for the summer, and now I am done!  Now I just need to memorize my voice music for my recital, and practice and rehearse a lot. But that will be all I need to concentrate on for the next week. I'm so excited!

I had a voice lesson this morning with Jane. She has helped me so much this year... My coloratura passage-work is getting to be so much easier for me.

Tonight I have a lesson with Paul (Ack!  I need to practice!!), and then my friend Dhivya is giving her recital at eight o'clock.

I feel like having a party.... :-D

Hooray!!!


P.S... New post on my Reflections...http://jacquelynsreflections.blogspot.com/2011/05/happiness.html

Finals week

I am sitting here in the computer lab at the conservatory and decided to take a little break from working on my final project/presentation on the Brahms Requiem for Oratorio Workshop tomorrow morning. 

I've been feeling much better this week after I was able to get some very good and long nights of sleep.  Now I just have to make it through the next few days and I will be done with all my final exams except for my recital and my jury!!  Friday will be the last day of finals :-D!!!!!!!

Mr. Mack McCray (the chair of the piano department here at the conservatory and the director of the Zephyr chamber music festival in Italy) stopped me on the sidewalk today and told me that I have been accepted to the festival and that they want me to come, and that they have a scholarship for me.  I am not sure how much the scholarship will be, but he said to come visit him later this evening (he is going to call me), and let me know the details.  It would be fun to go to Italy this summer!  We will see what the scholarship ends up to be.

It will be so nice to be back in Montana this summer, too.  I miss the Rims and the mountains and big wide open spaces. 

My parents might be getting me some recording equipment this summer so I can start making recordings more easily.  That would make me happy!   It won't be anything super fancy, but recording technology (along with every other technology) is advancing so quickly that I think I'll be able to do quite well with some basics. Hopefully I can learn how to use the equipment well enough to get some professional-sounding stuff.

Anyway, lots to think about and plan for! I guess I should go get back to work.

Until later...

Tired

Oh my goodness things have been so busy and crazy... There are only two more weeks left of school - except for my recital on May 15th. It's so crazy! These nine months have gone by very fast.

I have been so stressed out with so many things to do -- final projects for continuo, improv, and oratorio classes, my recital planning/practicing, three classes of Italian (lo imparo parlare molto meglio! -I am learning to speak it much better!), voice lessons, piano lessons, studio class, Baroque Ensemble voice classes... Aaaaaaaaaa!!!   Thinking about all of it all the time is making it very difficult (if not impossible) for me to sleep - and for the past 2 weeks I only slept on average three hours per night.  I just lay there for hours, trying to sleep, but not succeeding.  The last two nights I have taken some melatonin (at my Mom's suggestion) to help me, which it has somewhat... but it makes my head feel a little weird so I don't really like it.   But it's better to sleep with melatonin than to go crazy from not sleeping!  It's been making me feel like a bit of an emotional basket case being so tired.

Anyway.. I will make it. Just a couple more weeks. And then I will be so sad to leave because I have learned so much here this year and made so many friends and worked with so many wonderful teachers.  But I don't have to think about that now.

I had a concert today for continuo class, where I accompanied a cellist on a sonata by Bonocini, playing the harpsichord.  That marks my very first harpsichord performance on stage, ever!  I'm sure there will be more to come.

I think I might go try to take a little nap and get some dinner now.  Happy week after Easter, everyone!

Recent posts on my other blogs:

http://jacquelynwrites.blogspot.com/2011/04/midnight-musing.html

http://jacquelynsreflections.blogspot.com/2011/04/tonight-i-am-so-grateful.html

http://jacquelynsreflections.blogspot.com/2011/03/to-father.html

Moving on

My mom called me yesterday and told me that a letter came from the University of Colorado in Boulder, telling me officially that they will not be offering me any scholarship money for the coming year (zero!!).  At this point I actually am not surprised by the news because the situation there has seemed very much in limbo for the past weeks.  After my audition Dr. Korevaar told me that an offer would be coming for me in early March, but early March came and went, and an offer did not. So I wrote an email to them and didn't hear back for several weeks, so finally I called the graduate office and a lady there told me that she didn't see my name on the list of scholarship recipients - They had already sent out their offers to their first choices, and I was not one of them. She told me though, that I might be on the "2nd tier" or "3rd tier", so that if somebody who received an offer rejects it, they might offer it to me instead. But now it's clear that I was not on the 2nd or 3rd tier, either!    So, I was disappointed about that (because I had been really excited about going there)--- but I think that there must be something much better in store for me (I don't know what yet... but something!). 

     This reminds me of the time that I auditioned for the Artist Diploma program at TCU, and received no scholarship money.  Back then I was really upset and disappointed, and hurt actually, because I knew all the teachers there and I had thought they would offer me something. But if I had gotten into the program there I would still be there right now, and would never have come to the conservatory here in San Francisco!  And I am sooo happy I have had this amazing opportunity. I  have learned and changed and grown so much this year.   And now, I guess because this one door has closed to me, all the others are still open now!   We will see what the future holds... :-)

     Tomorrow I have to play the last movement of my Schubert Sonata for studio class.  I just got it memorized aaaaaaaa!  I'm nervous, but I'm nervous about my recital in general; everything is coming up so fast!     My time at the conservatory is going to be over in a flash!  I can hardly believe it.  One month left with all my wonderful teachers.   But they are all so wonderful that they say I can come back any time and they will listen to me and give me lessons again (Jane and Paul have both told me that!).  And I'm sure my Italian teacher would be happy to meet with me and chat in Italian again.  I love it when I feel like I have made a new (or a few) life-long friends.  Life is good.

Okay must go sleep so that my brain can try to organize all the work I did on Schubert today.

Goodnight!

New Program

Oh my gosh the days have been sooo busy here at the conservatory I have had no time to write!  I am so tired tonight... But I wanted to write just a litte bit before I go to bed.

Today I had a lesson with Jane and we spent it looking at possible music for my recital program. I think I have pretty much decided on the songs I will sing and the pieces I will play.  Now I just have to learn them!!! I have one month - I think (and hope) it will be possible.  I've got to get back to practicing long hours.

Did I tell you that my Italian teacher, Brian Neilson, invited me to go to the Advanced Italian class now?  I am so happy!  That happened last week.  It actually happened when I missed my intermediate class and he said I could come to the advanced one to make it up, but then when I went he told me that I could keep coming.  Of course I'm happy to go and have the opportunity to keep getting better so fast at Italian!  The advanced class is a lot of fun because it is just a few students that sit around a small table in Professor Neilson's (we call him Brioni) office.  He brings snacks and we sit and work on exercises together, watch Italian movies and have discussions in Italian.  I love it!  Now I really want to go to Italy this summer.  I am hoping it can work out.  I applied to a summer chamber music festival that one of the teachers here runs, called the Zephyr Chamber Music Festival.  Mack McCray is the director.  Mr. McCray came into my practice room a couple of weeks ago and told me that Paul "highly recommended" me to him for the festival - so I submitted an application and played my audition last Thursday.

So in case you are curious what I am currently thinking will be my program for my recital, here it is:

Piano: Bach: Prelude and Fugue in F-sharp Major (I think from Book 2)
Voice: Bach: "Aus liebe" from the St. Matthew Passion

Piano: Schubert: Sonata in A Major, Op. 120
Voice: Schubert: Du Bist di Ruh
                        Im Fruhling

Piano: Liszt: Paganini Etudes Nos. 3 and 4
Voice: Liszt: I Love But Thee
                  Oh When I Dream

Piano: Rachmaninoff: Moment Musicaux Nos. 4 and 5 (or 3 and 4)
Voice: Rachmaninoff: I Long for Thee
                               Lilacs


How does it look?  I hope it's not too long (or too short)... I need to figure out the exact timings for all the pieces. But I can do that tomorrow.   

This will be a very interesting experience for me because this will be the first recital that I have ever given like this - where I sing and play classical music on the same concert.   I am wondering if it might be difficult to "switch gears" so much back and forth between singing and playing... But it's something I really want to do, so if it is difficult then I will just need to get better at it!  And of course there always has to be a first time for everything.

Well I guess I will go and get a little sleep now.  Goodnight!

Paul and I

Today in studio class I played the first movement of my Schubert Sonata in A major from memory for the first time.  Paul had a lot to say about it, and my friend Dhivya was there with her camera taking pictures (she enjoys practicing photography in addition to the piano!).  Here is a picture of Paul demonstrating for me at the piano:

He is such a wonderful teacher and person.  I'm so grateful I got to come here to study this year!!!