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!!!

New Blog Views

I was on my blog-editing page and saw that Google has created some new ways for people to view blogs.  If you type in the address of my (or any) blog that has the views enabled, and then type " /view " after it, you will be able to see the different views.  So mine would be:  www.jacquelynweitz.blogspot.com/view
and
www.jacquelynwrites.blogspot.com/view
www.jacquelynsreflections.blogspot.com/view


There is a little pull-down menu at the top that says "sidebar" and then other views are available underneath it such as "snapshot" and "mosaic".   You can see a lot more posts in these views than in the normal blog view. Enjoy!

Jazz fun, plans and other ramblings

On Thursday in my improvisation class we improvised for the first time as a group from a "lead sheet" (the piece of music that has the melody and chords written out for a jazz tune).  That made me really happy because so far in the class we have mostly been doing a kind of "free improv", where we don't try to plan or follow a pre-determined melody or harmony.  It was actually a lot of fun... and it felt more natural to me than I thought it would, even though my improvisations were not very good.  We each took turns improvising first on the melody, and then improvising a "walking bass line", while the rest of the group comped the harmonic progression.  The way Mario (our improv teacher) explained how to make a walking bass made it seem so simple - and it has always seemed like such a mystery to me how bassists come up with their walking bass patternds.  Basically, though, to make a walking bass we use the first and the fifth note of each chord change as a guide post, and then make "walking" (or mostly step-wise) patterns between them as the chords change, trying to (usually) end up on the root (first note) of the chord at the beginning of each measure.  To start out Mario said that you can just try to play the root on the first beat of each measure, and the fifth on the middle of each measure, and then start to make the walking patterns between them.  Then from there you can start coming up with lots of variations... and by listening to what other people do you can borrow from their ideas.

I am so excited to keep studying jazz... But I don't know where I am going to be living next year!!!  I want to keep playing with a jazz group though so that I can keep improving --  And then someday be able to sing and play jazz songs while improvising!

I feel in kind of a weird place right now because I still don't know where I will be in the fall.   March went mostly by and I didn't hear anything about the results of my scholarship audition at the University in Colorado in Boulder... So I called the graduate office last week and left a message asking about my scholarship status.  A lady called and left a message at my home in Montana saying that she looked up my name on the list of scholarship recipients and I wasn't there.... but she said I could possibly be on the "2nd tier" or "3rd tier" or "4th tier" (which means if somebody decides not to accept their offer from CU Boulder then I could be next in line to receive it... or 3rd, or 4th, etc.).  But she said she doesn't have access to that information.    So I just have to wait and see.   If a scholarship doesn't come through for me then I will have to figure out something else to do.  Maybe I am meant to do something else.  
       The options that seem most plausible for me right now are: 1. Go home to Montana for a little while and practice and make recordings and study with my teachers there (and live at home for free).  2.  Try to get a job here in San Francisco (if I could earn enough money to pay my rent and living costs) and keep studying with Paul and Jane.  3. Go live in Madison, Wisconsin with my grandma or great aunt (for free probably) and study with the teachers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. 4. Move to Los Angeles and try to get more into producing recordings and videos.  If I move to L.A. I would also need to find a job... There are some jobs open there for various churches that I am considering applying for.   and # 5. Possibly going to Italy for a little while to study/perform there and perfect my Italian! 
        Decisions, decisions!  The hard part is I still won't know anything for certain from Boulder until at least the end of May.  But also I am waiting to hear from the America's Got Talent auditions... that could influence my decision as well.  I think that the AGT auditions should be contacting me by the end of April if I got in.  If I didn't get in then I just won't hear from them.


       I am really overwhelmed with everything I have to get done this week as well as before the end of the semester...   I have to perform in studio class tomorrow some of my Schubert Sonata which is barely memorized and was not very good yesterday when I was practicing it.  Then Tuesday I have to perform some new music with a singer for continuo class, on Wednesday I have to be ready to sing new repertoire for both Oratorio workshop and Baroque Ensemble, and on Thursday Paul wants to hear all of my Schubert sonata from memory at my lesson.  I don't know how I will get all of this ready but I will try.  I also have a concert coming up in only a couple of weeks where I will be playing the continuo part on the harpsichord for a cello sonata. I need to set up some rehearsals with my cellist for this weekend.
        
        Today is a General Conference broadcast for my church, so I'm going to try to watch some of that.   I guess now that I should go get practicing!!!  :-S  Happy April Everyone!