Last day of undergraduate classes today. That means my last classes at U of M EVER!!!!!!!!
Most of the day I've been giddy.
I walked up the stairs to see a group of people huddled on a couch, and they called me over to join. It was all the fourth year singers that I've been friends with over the last 4 years crowding together to commemorate our last year all together as a group.
It reminded me of what wonderful friends I have had at school during this degree.
As the group dissembled to run off to class or rehearsal, I stood looking around realizing that at that precise moment, this portion of my life has closed and I'm in the transition period leading to the next part of my life.

I started the day with my last comp lesson with this year's teacher at 9:30 in the morning. It was wonderful, I didn't actually have any works to show him, but we talked about some things to think about for the future. His advice was that I should continue with my conceptual compositions. He's excited and interested to see where I will go with them. I mentioned that I don't want to get carried away with that and thus miss some key aspects of the compositional craft- to which he responded that having such a concern at this point means that I will find a way to always pursue the highest degree of my craft. In short, he inspired me.
We also discussed the film project I'm going to work on this summer. I don't have much/any experience with electroacoustic sound production and the film director would prefer less traditional sounds than the piano. My teacher suggested that I mimic the historical beginnings of electroacoustic music: Record piano and then play the attack backwards or get rid of the attack altogether, then you have the colour, but often people don't even associate the sound with piano. Basically he gave me license to do something that I would have thought of as too simple or not adventurous enough. This approach will be fun and manageable.

My last piano lesson today ended on a pretty good note. I played my little 2 minute piece and we talked about the areas to fix up, but that was it. He asked if I wanted another lesson before the jury and I said no, so that's that! I did ask his opinion on which grad school to choose, but he didn't know much of either Edmonton or London. Nevertheless, he helped guide me through some of the logic of it. Most people have mentioned that London is close to Toronto with the thoughts that I could see concerts and stuff, but he somehow worded it differently and related it to the dance community. That was one of my concerns, I'm loving improv with dancers so much lately that I would hate to give it up altogether and neither city has a major dance community. However, if I was only an hour away from Toronto, it's reasonable that I could develop some relationships with collaborators.

Therefore I have two new important considerations in my choosing of a grad program:
-style of teacher: someone who will allow me to continue and develop my conceptual compositions.
-The fact that Western is reasonably close to a major dance/music/cultural center.

Phew, that's a lot of considerations and blogging for now.