Strads and Cremona, 'Suessical', and 'Psycho' :)

Written by Joshua Iyer
Published: March 23, 2015 at 10:37 PM [UTC]

So on Saturday this week, my violin and I are heading off to Italy with the orchestra to play in three concerts, which I believe we're playing in churches in several spots. We're visiting places like Rome and Florence and on the last day, we're going to Cremona to visit the Strad Museum, which I'm very excited for! I've spent this last weekend doing a lot of listening to lots of music, and practicing for rehearsals and thinking on the musical side of things, that I haven't spent much time thinking about how this magical object is put together. In class today, we watched a video documentary on just that, featuring some of the talented violinists of our time discussing playing on these instruments, so I just wanted to share that with all of you. I will certainly try to post an entry when we get back from Italy next Saturday recounting all the sights and concerts we played in. :)

Secondly, although this applies more to after the trip, I had my first rehearsal for Suessical the Musical today! I'm playing first violin, and it should be a ton of fun to play through this music with a much larger strings section than with Shrek from over the summer, where they just had two violins. Our director is talking about us reading Dr. Suess books to help us get in the mood, since the musical is a fantastic blend of a lot of great Suess stories, which gets my inner child happy, and also brings back a ton of nostalgia of reading "Green Eggs and Ham" to my sister when I was six (she was three). She also did the junior version of this musical when she was in fourth grade, and I remember listening to some of the Broadway versions and hearing the orchestra in the car. I'm sure I'll talk a lot more about the show in the future, as we're just sight-reading everything these next few days, but it should still be great.

So yeah! That's about everything. Oh, and for the Pops concert this year, our orchestra and Chamber Strings are playing a 15ish minute suite from "Psycho"! I'm super excited for that, since I love this score by Bernard Herrmann in 1960. I was just watching the BBC Proms 2011 Film Night concert yesterday (and the Star Trek music from the Hollywood in Vienna 2013) and heard the Psycho stuff. It's cool cause it's meant for just strings, and, well, that's what the Orchestra Pops Concert is all about! And since I'm a senior, this is the last one for me... Anyways, hope you enjoyed this entry, and be sure to check out the video below!

Violin Masters Video And I liked Joshua Bell's comment about how if he doesn't want to practice, he opens up his case, sees his remarkable instrument, and decides to practice, I guess for me, I can listen to my own violin concerto maybe, or watch this video or other violin videos I've done in the past, and see how I could improve my own sound, then I'll open up my case, see my favorite object ever, and then be happy and play the night (or morning or afternoon) away... :)

And on a somewhat related note, it's my third year on violinist.com! :)

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