This weekend was one of those that was very busy, and filled with stuff, and nowhere near as productive as I wanted to be...
The definate highlight of the weekend was seeing a 24 year old Russian girl play the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1. It's a pinnacle of music for piano. Fabulous music and impressively difficult. Reading in her Bio that she has been concertizing since she was 10.. I was prepared to be all bitter about yet another prodigy... but no. There was something that had developped out of her experience. Technique aside, which was nothing less than amazing, there was depth in her playing that showed a true musicality and emotional connection with the music. I was very impressed and happy that for the first time, I have seen someone that was or is a prodigy that was anything other than technical, flashy, energetic, .. the embodiment of unaged musicianship.
A group of the U of M F of M pianists talked with her after the concert, and she was amazingly humble and inspiring. She made a comment about just needing to know what sound you want to produce, and then finding a way to make it happen.... which also shows that she thinks musically first, then technically. This whole experience was altogether REFRESHING!
Also on the weekend, rehearsal for Reign of Sound as the concert is coming up:
Next Sunday October 23'rd at 7:30 pm at Holy Trinity Church (Donald at Graham)
The choral stuff is coming together relatively nicely.. it's amazing music to begin with. As well, I am officially comfortable and prepared for the piano pieces Im playing. I'll be playing them tomorrow in a noon-hour recital at school, and I feel good about it. Of course there is always more to do, but I'm very excited about this. I haven't played piano in front of an audience for a little while, so it will be nice to give people an update, and hopefully it will seem like I have actually improved over the last half year.
Today, I finally made it to that modern ballet class I've been trying to get to! The drummer is a bit of a personality clash... but he does amazing work. I really enjoyed the class. Interesting things they do in terms of movements and body flow. The musicality of the accompaniment was nowhere near as complicated or weird as I thought it might have been. The only difference is in the length of phrases, but its still always a 3 or a 2 or a 4 metre. In ballet, 8 is the magic number, phrases are always the same... but in modern, they have phrases of 5 or 3 or 7 or 11 or sometimes 8 also... basically anything, and it fits the movements of the class. Basically what I was going there was to get an overview of how rhythm fits with modern dance, and now I have a fairly good idea. My next step is to watch a piano accompaniment for a modern class at the Contemporary Dancers, which will give me a different, and more accessible understanding.