7 posts tagged “school”
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13TH, 2006, 8 PM
I don't mean to neglect this page, really. It's only that it has become something of an afterthought when I don't have a regular internet connection and Comcast does not see it fit to install one when I ask them to.
Another very sketchy update, yes, but I still don't have an internet connection of my own and when I can get one it's been sort of spotty on the speed end.
First things first, school is going very well. I've worked my way up the ladder of sorts, and I'm now playing soprano in both my school's top quartet and in the Boston Saxophone Orchestra. Just last week we had our masterclass with Jean-Marie Londeix and Bill Street, and it was amazing. Londeix has such mastery of the instrument, such knowledge of the repertoire, that it's impossible not to learn something profound when you hear him speak. One thing he was particularly concerned with was the historical background behind every piece. Taking into consideration that most of the standards in the saxophone repertoire were comissioned for him, he knows the history extremely well. He brings in so many outside inspirations - authors, directors, other instruments, poets, colors, moods - that one could never run out of places to find influence.
Picture? OK.
Sorry for the low quality and lack of focus, but I (obviously) didn't take the photo. In any event, that's Londeix in the center, flanked by the Boston Saxophone Studio (comprised of the students from New England Conservatory, Longy School Of Music, Boston Conservatory, and Berklee, all students of Ken Radnofsky).
The apartment is great, the location is as awesome as I expected it would be, and so far the cats seem to like it. I also joined Gold's Gym and have gotten back into the swing of my workout routine, and so far it's been going great as well. I'm down another couple pounds since I arrived in Boston, but I can't be sure whether that's getting back into working out or walking about 3 miles a day. Either way, if it isn't broke, don't fix it.
All in all, I enjoy Boston.
A very fast and dirty update -
I got my things form UPS, a large amount of which were broken, but thankfully nothing extremely expensive and yes, I did insure them.
School is awesome. Studying with Ken has been great so far, and my playing has gotten exponentially better. I seem to have finally cracked the altissimo problem, and I'm getting up to a D#4 now. I'm making really good progress on the Concertino, and I am starting a new Sonata this week. I also have a very cool duo with violin this semester, and some sax quartet and sax orchestra work. We're working on Lauba's Les 7 Iles, which is very very hard, so I'm understudying on it, but we will be rehearsing and performing it for Jean-Marie Londeix in only about 10 days. Never did I imagine I'd be rehearsing with Londeix less than a month after moving here.
Still no internet, TV, or phone service, so I am kind of incommunicado for the time being, but I will post when I have new info. Also, cartoon:
UPS has all my shit. It's in Watertown. I don't actually know where Watertown is, but I also have to go there to get a new driver's license so the federal government will give me more cash money for school.
If the previous tenant of my apartment had gotten out on the day he was supposed to and not 5 days late - especially being that he was already 3 weeks late - I would have been there when UPS tried to deliver all the packages I shipped to myself and they wouldn't have gotten sent to a warehouse in idontknowwherethefuckitis. But I guess I'm going down... going down to Watertown.
Today I would like to get my cats into the apartment. They've spent almost a week living in my sister's place, rotating between rooms so they don't meet the dog. There have been 2 cat-dog encounters, neither of which have gone especially well, so I don't enjoy the situation. I also don't enjoy kenneling the cats while I move boxes in and out of my apartment, so there's that, too.
It's still very drab here, and Becky tells me the weather in Chicago is not any better. Ordinarily that would be bad news, assuming the weather moves to the northeast as it usually does, but the forecasters in the area seem to disagree. They are predicting sunny days in the low 70s for the rest of the week. Still, that's much cooler than I am used to. It will be nice not to have to put on sunscreen in September, though.
At this point I'm really searching for things to write, so I'll cap it and come back later.
Unfortunately, SBC is a company staffed by idiots. So when I requested that my DSL be shut off on the 23rd, they of course shut it off a week early.
Thursdays are always busy days for me. For the last two years they've been a barrage of classes, lessons, and rehearsals. This summer is no different, as I've been driving an hour south of my home for saxophone quartet rehearsal, duet rehearsal, partner lessons, then back, and an hour north for rehearsals with the Chicago Suburban Symphony Orchestra. To pass the time, Eric and I engage in long, winding discussions about whatever comes to mind. Today the topic of overseas study came up.
It has been in the back of my mind for several years that I want to study music overseas. I think I'm moving closer by studying in Boston this semester, attending a French style conservatory, and working with a teacher with very close ties to the continent. I need to get out of the United States, this cultural and artistic vacuum. While modern American music flounders under it's own bulk and expectations, the traditional European centers of musical creativity - Vienna, Paris, London, Amsterdam - continue to bring new ideas to the classical idiom.
While American culture stagnates from the homogeny of our chain store landscape, there are places in Europe where the history and traditions of a town trace back before there was a Wal*Mart. Or a McDonald's. Or a Drive-In.
Of course there are places like that in America as well - our oldest cities predate Wal*Mart by at least 30 years - but they are predominantly on the East Coast, are all old English settlements, and even at their wizened age have seen barely 15 generations of local people.
Don't get me wrong - I really do like America. I like the political ideas we still hold, or attempt to hold. I like my freedoms, despite their steady shrinking. I like being able to go virtually anywhere on this continent and still be in my own country, if not close. I enjoy the diversity of the land and the different peoples that have come here. But you can't spend your entire life in one place and expect to understand the world.
Eric wants to study in France as well, but his situation is complicated. He is married, his wife (a Canadian) has barely gotten her citizenship and doesn't want to go through the process again, and he just started his graduate studies at DePaul here in Chicago. So as something of a gesture of a shared wish, we spent the entirety of our 4 hours in the car today speaking... French.
By the end, we were actually able to hold full, long winded conversations in a language neither of us had spoken in almost 2 years. It's amazing what a little practice can do.
(It's also amazing how infectious and ubiquitous our product driven lifestyle is becoming. I hope for the world's sake that we never lose the individual cultures that have given life to so many unique ideas.)
