I'm off to the AZ Burning Man decompression party. A couple days of camping in the woods by Flagstaff. This should be good.

I'm only now ready for bed. On the plus side, my composition homework is complete. It's not even a bad little piece. Maybe I'll post it later on ( Read more... )

I am so tired. This is not an okay time to be awake, much less if one is expected to be functional.

Well, my orchestral conducting debut has come and gone. I was nervous, but it was fun too. It was funny, the teacher announcing my name caused murmurs to ripple through the string sections. The Heifetz name will do that to you. Overall, I'm satisfied with how I did. There were some moments that were successful, and others that definitely weren ( Read more... )

I just realized something! I have functional knees! I don't know why or how, but the knee problem that has been with me for a bunch of years now has been pretty much absent since I've been in AZ. I've noticed a hint of it at times, but only very mildly. The way I was dancing tonight, there was none. Lots of the moves I was doing would be ( Read more... )

I've had a bunch of good things happen in the past few days. Yay ( Read more... )

I put off practicing conducting the Tchaikovsky until now, and again I find myself feeling overwhelmed. On one hand, conducting is easier than playing an instrument; you don't have to play any notes. All you have to do is feel the music and show that in your body. So the first step for me is listening to the piece a whole bunch and getting ( Read more... )

In my last post I talked about my concerns with my piano study. I finally had a chance to talk with my teacher on Tuesday. It was good in that he is very supportive of my concerns, wants to help, and wants me to keep him aprised of how I'm feeling. It was disappointing in that I wanted to leave with some sense of resolution, perhaps some ( Read more... )

I've been pretty unhappy and unmotivated about piano for the last week or two. I blogged about some of my concerns earlier, but these concerns have grown in strength and conviction. I'm finally going to talk with my piano teacher tomorrow about this. I was going to on Friday, but he was sick, and then today he had no time. So tomorrow is the ( Read more... )

I'm going to be standing in front of a full symphony orchestra one week from tomorrow to conduct part of Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony. I just listened to a recording, and I can barely even follow along in the score. This is terrifying. There are 17 staves to follow at one time! I don't have the first clue how to go about preparing for this. Eek