July 23, 2004 at 2:47 PM

School is done! No more math! Yay! Actually, strangely, school aside, this whole school thing has had a positive impact on me, musically. It's made me really appreciate the time I've had to spend on practicing and I've generally worked harder when I've had the time to practice. I'm happy school is done now though and I'm hoping to keep this work habit up! We'll see how it goes....

I had a violin lesson yesterday. It was the first in just over a month. It felt good to play Bach, Paganini, Stravinsky and sight-read a Wieniawski Caprice. I'm playing the Bach Preludio in a masterclass on Tuesday. Should be interesting! I'm excited about playing it, I love performing, but it's still relatively new to me and playing it and playing it well will be a challenge. I'll probably be having some private lessons with the violinist who's doing the masterclass, so I hope I learn a lot! Should be a fun and interesting week anyways!

Next week is a chamber/orchestral music program that I'm taking organised by my teacher and another teacher I know really well. Sadly there aren't many very advanced players (all around suzuki book 4 or 5 I belive with the exception of one person who's about book 6) so music wise it probably won't be the hugest challenge, but it will be fun! My teacher said she was going to string up her viola for me so I can play viola in a string quartet, violin in another, then possibly even piano in another ensemble. It will be nice to be able to do some chamber music even if it's not quite the intensity and difficulty of what I did last summer in Kincardine. (Brahms String Sextet No. 1)

I finally have received my history exam! I knew that I had passed thanks to marks being posted 6 weeks or so after the exam, but I really wanted to see where I got my marks and lost them. I scored almost perfect on all the True and False questions and scored pretty high on all the piece questions I was asked. The outline of Carmen and Haydn's detailed bio, composition style, contributions, genres, and everything else about the man, is where I lost marks. Overall though, I did well on the exam, and got a fairl decent mark for it! Yay!

Sometime today or tomorrow I need to phone Sound Post (in Toronto) and get some more etude books ordered. Rode, Gavinies, Dont. The ones of theirs I've done I've borrowed from my teacher, but I need to order the books myself. I'm trying to think if I can splurge (apparently that is a word) on another piece of music and if I do, what piece should I pick? Maybe the Janacek Sonata? Ah well, we'll see!

We have an organ that is now a resident in our household here. It's an old pump organ. It's quite the work out to play on! (probably a good thing) I've been enjoying playing Bach on it. The voicings come out more clearly and it feels strange but somehow more natural well maybe not natural when you put in the swells and continious pumping, but more authentic playing Bach on the organ. He was afterall a great organ master and virtuoso!

Well I think this is enough of an update for now!

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July 23, 2004 at 2:47 PM

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