1 Year with my New Violin!

March 3, 2017, 9:26 AM · This time of year has been particularly exciting to me for lots of different reasons! I'll start with my violin first.

From February 20th, it's been a whole year since I got my new violin! It feels weird calling it "new" now, as I've had it for so long and already have played so many amazing things on it - fun stuff like the Doctor Who suite in the summer and my "Painting of Japan" piece in October, and for orchestra, the Hoe-Down in the Copland, among many other fun things. As I had had my other violin since 2009, it was difficult for me to remember many things about the process of getting it - I got this violin in 2016, and still today I am loving its sound even more now snd I really feel happy that it's the violin for me, as if it chose me to play and keep it! Looking ahead, I'm very excited for our orchestra rep this term - I'm playing the first violin for some great works! The entire Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the overture to Verdi's "La Forza del Destino," and the one that rings closest to me, Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet!" In past violinist.com entries I've probably raved about how much I loved that piece - probably as much as Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" (like Daniel Hope - I love this idea so much, as I love the seasons of the year and nature! :P). It is of course very cool that I'll be playing that sweeping love theme (I have been - and really eating up the expressiveness my violin can do!) and the rest of the piece, too, of course. I'm very excited for this final term of my second year of college (wow!) - I will hopefully take my violin out even more and practice more!

That was my main update, but this sort of relates. All last week, my main project was finishing a chamber piece I had begun called "The Forest of Quelkísthiden." This piece originally was to be a choir piece, and I had written out a poem for it, which I'll share below. However, my professor recommended I write it for a chamber ensemble, so we picked out the group and I was easily able to turn it into a work that, I think, is starting to get out of my comfort zone into something a little edgier, might be a good way to describe it. (The poem is very Mahler-esque, and dark, so that may be what tipped me over.) I will probably be playing the violin part this fall, and I am very excited for it as it is even bigger than "Painting of Japan" was last year! The piece is scored for oboe, English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, percussion, and string trio. It will be very cool to get this performed!

Finally, in a couple weeks, I will be attending the NASA Saxophone Conference in South Dakota for a performance of my saxophone sonata, playing the piano part! It should be very cool and a lot of fun.

I hope you don't mind these simple "update" entries I'll try and continue doing at the beginning of the month. Of course, if the muse strikes I'll write on various musical topics or something, but for now, I'm perfectly happy to share my personal musical experiences here on my blog!

Don't forget to keep on practicing. :)

Also, check out TwoSetViolin! I may have mentioned them before, but they're a great comedy violin duo (look them up on YouTube). They've recently been doing some vlogs from their tour - they're now in Taiwan, and of course showing on the streets playing Pokémon Go, and random spouts of Paganini here and there. :) (Also speaking in Nintendo... Zelda: Breath of the Wild! So looking forward to hearing what I suppose to be a grand orchestral soundtrack! There was a solo violin in the trailer, and lots of piano... The game came out today.)

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1 Year with my New Violin!

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