A Nostalgic Musical Summer.

July 3, 2018, 1:47 PM · This summer has been fairly musical so far! One of the newest things I'm doing is teaching piano lessons! The four young students I have are eager to learn music from Star Wars and Beethoven's Fifth, easy piano transcriptions I was able to put together. It has been great to pass on my love of music as a whole medium through teaching, and I think this can become a big part of my life next summer after I graduate - possibly teaching violin or Music Theory as well!

In terms of practicing, I have been kept busy by playing some recitals for a retirement home. I played one last week on both violin and piano with Telemann, Purcell, Vivaldi, Ravel, and Satie. Since I focused on the Baroque period more on violin, I picked the first movement of "Summer", seeing as now's the perfect time to play it. I have been preparing a new program for August where I'll play the third movement of that piece, the entire Ravel Piano Sonatine and First Violin Sonata, both pieces I played during the summer of 2015, and on piano my Minuet in C - the first ever composition I wrote at Augustana back in autumn 2015.

I suppose the reason why I've harkened back to that particular summer has to do with my composition project this year. Since I've finished up all my music for my senior composition recital and am now focusing on practicing it, I thought it would be good to orchestrate my 2015 String Quartet. I really like so many things about it, mainly how much of a blend it is between my early discovery of Ravel and my earlier 2014 style of writing. So, I've taken this summer to be a big musical nostalgia trip before I head back to my senior year of school. It is very interesting orchestrating a string quartet piece that already has so much color to it, but I am finding lots of ways to make sections "more cinematic" - which will go hand-in-hand with my hopeful future in cinematography and composing my own soundtracks for films and video games.

So yeah - I've been having a blast this summer mostly focusing my days on my musical activities, and some preparation for future and real-life as well. It feels good to have so many of these little projects to keep me going during this hot month of July.

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A Nostalgic Musical Summer.

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