Recital approaching… EEP!
My recital date has nearly been set. (They’re just trying to find a third examiner but they don’t anticipate having any problem with that.)
So the date will (probably) be Thursday 10th December. I think it will be 6pm.
I’m playing the Debussy piano and violin sonata in G minor and the Grieg violin and piano sonata in C minor. Both pieces are amazing and I shall struggle to do them justice. The Debussy is mysterious, fantastical, distant, capricious. The Grieg is exciting, virtuosic, extroverted and majestic. My associate artists are two wonderful violinists, one from the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and the other a fellow Honours student at the Con.
Entry is free and it’s at Elder Hall at Adelaide Uni. So please come if you’re free and in town. Because this is like, the single biggest event of the year for me and I need all the support I can get!
Once the date and time is confirmed I’ll do proper invites. (Meaning I’ll make a Facebook event, lol.)
A Fine Ear
What all fine musicians have in common is a good ear. Music is aural, so the ear gets to make all the final calls. A more discerning ear can detect more ranges of sound and nuance. To “laypeople”, a Steinway grand may sound much like a Kawai upright, and a first year Conservatorium student may sound much like a professional artist.
When you learn a musical instrument long enough, you get to a stage where you are no longer simply concerned with merely playing the right notes. Even louds and softs become obsolete. The way in which you judge the quality of sound has to become so refined. The word “soft” by itself isn’t descriptive enough. What kind of soft? A rounded, pebbly sound? Or a bright, sparkly sound? I often find I revert to visually descriptive words to talk about the kind of sound I want. My teacher, on the other hand, always tends towards describing sound as an energy force. Even the mystery of music as an emotive force is an illusion created by sound.
The difference between a fantastic piano and an average piano, is that the average piano will always sound, well, average. Upright pianos of fairly decent quality usually sound pretty unoffensive. A really awesome grand piano, like the Steinway grands we have at the Con are much harder to control. They can sound pretty awful if you bang away on them, not knowing what you’re doing. (Like how I played for most of my time as a student.) But they are capable of a huge range of sounds. To make the most of the instrument’s capabilities, the pianist has to have a large arsenal of playing techniques to draw upon, and, most importantly, the ear to detect what sound they want, and whether or not they have achieved that.
When I started out at the Conservatorium, I was playing without listening. I came from an electronic organ background, so I knew that piano technique would be the difficult thing for me to master. Only now that I have reached Honours level have I begun to make the connection between the ear and technique. Technique is nothing without ear.
Sigh. I’m rambling. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, my first Honours recital is coming up. So I’ve been preoccupied with piano things. In other news, the music room gets devilishly hot when the weather’s warm, as it has been recently. I’ve moved a fan in there, making it more bearable, but I still have to come out for frequent breaks.
Besides recital stuff, term 4 is always a busy term for teachers. There’s a bunch of concerts and things to prepare for at Yamaha. So… much… to… do!!
Well, bye for now.
New Camera!
My Fuji Instax Mini 7 camera arrived in the mail a couple of weeks ago. It is so much fun and very addictive. I took the photos above with it the other day when my little brother and I took the dog to the park. The park was covered with yellow flowers; it looked amazing. Unfortunately, it was also covered with bees and I was wearing sandals, so we proceeded across the grassy expanse with caution.
The camera is heaps easy to use. It has just 4 light settings. A couple of the photos above turned out overexposed because I used the wrong setting. Film works out to about less than $2 each and loads into the camera in packs of ten.
These photos would be heaps good for scrapbooking.
I have been really busy and stressed lately, so no time for paper crafts unfortunately! I have a recital coming up and I still have so much to do! I am playing two piano and violin sonatas; one by Debussy and the other by Grieg. I am playing with two different violinists, too. One is a fellow Honours student at the Con and we have had only one rehearsal. The other is a professional from the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and we are having our first rehearsal tomorrow. Both pieces are really fucking hard, but I am especially freaked out about the Grieg because I physically cannot play the 3rd movement. Sigh. Just gotta keep pegging away at it.
In other news, it is October and festive Christmas-ware has already begun to appear in the shops.
I ate a whole box of Mr. Kipling’s mince pies to myself.
Links Roundup
I’m not adventurous enough on the interwebs to do weekly links posts like some bloggers, but here is a list of some of my favourite places on the web at the moment. Most of them are art, design or style blogs. Click, click!
- Doe Deere Blogazine. The accompanying blog to Doe Deere’s Lime Crime Makeup range. She’s got great style.
- Dooce. This woman’s blog is probably aimed at an older readership, but I still find it quite funny and interesting.
- Julie in Japan. A Canadian girl teaching English in Japan. Funny and cute!
- Nubby Twiglet. Art and design by a Portland-based graphic designer.
- Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog. Um, self-explanatory? Steve Pavlina got me onto Paraliminals.
- Kingdom of Style.
- Biorequiem by Zoetica Ebb.
- My Milk Toof. Another funny and cute one.
- Luxirare. She hasn’t posted in a while, but her projects are always amazing.
- Style Bubble. The original and the best.
- Rubby Gatta. Art, design and interior decor inspiration by kitty-cat, Ruby.
- Kris Atomic. Photography and art by Kris Atomic.
Hm, so yeah, that’ll do for now. I might do a shopping Links Roundup later. Just for funs.
Brown paper packages tied up with string
Image by Slightlynorth
Internet at this house is slow, slow, slow. Hopefully we will soon be changing internet service providers and getting a decent amount of download limit. I’ll wait until then to post a bunch of pictures of stuff including some humourous notebooks I bought from a little store in Chinatown and some images of a random book that I’m in.
Slow internet may have stopped me from posting as frequently, but it certainly hasn’t prevented me from browsing through eBay with vigour! I think the appeal for me lies in a combination of receiving packages in the mail, and scoring bargains. So far this week, I have received some scrapbooking goodies including an acrylic block for stamping, and some Le Plume double-ended markers.
This morning a set of 24 Bobbi Brown makeup brushes arrived. Auctions for professional makeup brushes on eBay are the most exciting auctions I’ve participated in. Everybody waits until the last minute until they all start bidding frantically. So I was pretty stoked to be the winning bidder. But when I opened up the package this morning, I could tell something was not quite right. Only a few of the brushes were still in their plastic sleeves and the quality of some were a bit dodgy. The mascara brush was wobbly and coming loose, and the eyeliner brush was a bit out of shape. Some of the brushes appeared to be shedding a tiny bit, which I noted with interest since Bobbi Brown brushes reputedly don’t shed much.
After some (painstakingly slow) research on the internet, I learned that imitation cosmetics and cosmetic brushes are rife on eBay – especially prevalent are fake MAC and Bobbi Brown products. I think a lot of buyers must not be aware of this, or they are aware but don’t mind too much since the products come at a fairly cheap price and still do the job well. After some consideration, I decided that I fall into the latter camp. Although the brushes are not genuine, they do the job better than the tools I had before, and they were fairly inexpensive. So I think I am satisfied.
In other consumerist news, the picture above is of a photo taken with a Fuji Instax Mini 7 camera. This model camera is another one of my recent purchases, but I have to wait for it to arrive. It’s shipping out from Japan. With the demise of Polaroid, Fuji Instax cameras will be the only instant cameras commercially available. They are reputedly quite popular in Japan at the moment, and now you can buy them in the United States too. They produce credit card-sized instant photos with good colour – apparently Fuji have improved on Polaroid film technology.
I think I’m becoming mildly camera-obsessed. I have an awesome point-and-shoot, a vintage film SLR of my Dad’s and now I’m getting an Instax Mini. I also want a digital SLR. Currently, I’m contemplating holiday plans versus digital SLR purchase. Hmmmm.
Liquid Desire
Yesterday I went to Melbourne to see Salvador Dali: Liquid Desire at the National Gallery of Victoria. Because I really wanted to see this exhibition but I couldn’t get time off work, I made a day trip out of it, flying in first thing yesterday morning and coming home last night.
The exhibition was really well done. It was huge – containing more than 200 of Dali’s works. Although his most famous work, “The Persistence of Memory”, was conspicuously absent, many other well-known works were on display.
I really enjoyed the commentary and notes written underneath the titles of the artworks. They were very informative, offering insightful remarks into the interpretation and history of the pieces. They brought to the reader’s attention that Dali’s artworks are not merely random and “trippy”, as a cursory viewing of his pictures would undoubtedly lead most to believe. His art is often very heavily laden with symbology inspired by his strong interest in current world events. He would also thoroughly and intelligently research his topics and had wide interests and influeces. I found this extremely interesting, especially since most of my views on Dali as a person were based on his autobiography “The Secret Life”. It’s a book in which the author presents himself as a precocious genius, playing up his own absurdity to the extreme. The exhibition enabled me to view him more objectively.
Some of my most favourite works that I saw yesterday were the ones inspired by Dali’s interest in atomic theory including “Galatea of the Spheres” and “Dematerialization near the Nose of Nero”. Something that was surprising to me was discovering that several of his paintings, which I had assumed were large-scale works of art, were actually tiny pieces painted on wood. This made them all the more amazing for their detail. I also did not know that Dali had dabbled in making jewellery. Several such pieces were on display. I also saw “Destino”, a short animated film produced by Dali and Walt Disney only recently completed.
The biggest downside of yesterday’s Dali adventure was that the gallery was extraordinarily busy. It was a Sunday after all. We had to line up for half an hour just to buy our tickets. Once we were in, I was a bit dismayed to see that people were crowding around each picture, making it difficult to view anything. But as we progressed through the exhibition I found that the crowds dispersed and I soon got pretty good at wiggling my way through to each art work. It was a matter of judging the movements of people. (People tend to move in crowds and groups).
We spent a good three hours there. The rest of the day was mainly full of eating, walking around, and waiting. Quite a lot of waiting actually, especially at the airport on the way home. I am a little ashamed to say that I got quite grumpy by the end of the day. Nonetheless, the trip was very worthwhile, I feel pretty lucky to have seen Dali’s art up close.
Coopers Live Showcase
My band’s got a gig coming up that I’m really excited about. It’s sponsored by Coopers. My band, Monkey Puzzle Tree will be playing alongside The Baker Suite and Galonka.
We had a group photo taken the other day. It was really fun.
