Christopher Ciampoli

Christopher Ciampoli is from Voorhees, New Jersey.

Biography

Archive:
June 2008

My Name's Chris

Well, I've been a member of v.com for about 4 years now, but I've never had a blog here (or anywhere). I'll start with a little about myself then. I've been playing violin since 4th grade (10 years old), but didn't start taking private lessons until 9th grade (15 years old). At that point I was still in Suzuki book 2! I had a lot of work to do catching up. Luckily the teacher I had was absolutely wonderful, and over the next 4 years he gave me a terrific foundation. After my senior year I was accepted as a music education major at 3 different universities, and I chose to come to The College of New Jersey, a choice several people might not have made. I liked the environment of the school a lot better, although the string department unfortunately is not as competitive as those at the other schools. I knew that coming in here though, and my motivation lies elsewhere than the people around me. The faculty are stellar though, and that's good enough for me.

Another thing. When I decided I might want to do music, I started learning piano (10th grade/16 years old). I took lessons for 6 months but then my teacher left for graduate school. So I continued to teach myself, until this second semester my freshman year, where I studied with one of the faculty here, and it was wonderful.

For the summer I have a couple of projects. My teacher told me to choose any Bach I wanted (I still have the Am, the CM, and the Chaconne waiting for me). I want to do the Chaconne last, and I LOVE the third mvt. Andante of the A minor so I chose that one. I'm also going to tackle Prokofiev's 2nd concerto, and continue going through Dont Op. 35. On piano I'm learning the Revolutionary Etude (Chopin, Op. 10/12), and continuing with the Bach French Suite No. 2 in Cm BWV 813, a movement from Tchaikovsky's Seasons, and I'm waiting for her to assign me something else.

WELL, with that out of the way I hope you don't mind if I muse about my workings now. The Revolutionary Etude is much easier than I anticipated it! It's pretty straight forward. It's another one of those many pieces that goes into the category "easier than it sounds". However, I never would have known that until I started working on it! I like to think there are two categories: pieces that amaze the listeners, but are actually relatively easy for the performer (relatively easy), and pieces that sound fine and are enjoyable to listen to, but are in fact secretly BANEFUL for the performer to prepare (I would put certain mvts. of solo Bach under here). I haven't decided under which category the Prokofiev 2nd concerto yet belongs, because the passage on the top of the third page is definitely baning me right now. Wow I didn't think bane could be a verb, but apparently it is. Learn something new everyday.

Well, I'm going to start practicing for today then. As I work on the Prokofiev, I'll continue to spite myself as I think about how easy these passages would be to play on the piano...

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