January 28, 2007 at 2:47 AM

I was digging around in the archives of my music on my desktop and it's amazing the treasures one can unearth when it's been a year or four since they last looked through and really cleaned up their computer - not that I was actually being constructive and cleaning my desktop up, that's too much like work. In my "cleaning" I found a little tune I wrote for a dear friend of mine and fellow member of this site for her birthday sometime ago - isn't that the way it goes, a person is hard to shop for so what do you do? You write a song! Or I did anyways.

I have a venue booked! My recital to try out my audition repertoire and a few other favorite pieces of mine is on February 23rd. The program includes the entire Dvorak Sonatina just because I love it and it's light-hearted and fun for the audience, a piece my brother wrote for me (which he'll be back to play the piano part for!!!), Rachmaninov's Vocalise, 1st and 2nd mvt from the G minor Bach sonata, Lark Ascending, an Eckhardt-Gramatte Caprice, Lotus Land arranged by Kreisler, and part of the Wieniawski D minor concerto! I think my work is cut out for me. I'm really excited about doing the recital and people have already told me that they've marked the day off on their calenders and that they are planning on coming!

Lately I've been doing more reading again and am currently re-reading "The Ice Master" by Jennifer Niven. Back when I was around 12 years old a couple of friends of mine and I participated in the BC Red Cedar Book Awards where we had to read a certain amount of books and then nominate one for the prize in each category - fiction and non-fiction. Both years that I was involved I read almost every book on the list and both years my two favorite authors were Kenneth Opal (for Silverwing and Sunwing) and Eric Walters (Trapped in Ice and Diamonds in the Rough). Eric Walters' book "Trapped in Ice" got me interested in an historical event that I had never previously heard anything about. A great northern expedition in the early 1900's to discover any remaining northern continents that had not yet been discovered. Walters story was a fictional adaptation of the actual expedition but the experiences and journey made by those aboard the doomed Karluk were not. I fell in love with the book, re-reading it many times and even getting my copy signed by the author then one day when I was 13, I was in Chapters with my family looking through books and I saw this book called "The Ice Master - The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the Karluk" . A lightbulb went on, that's the same ship and story as Trapped in Ice! I quickly picked it up and started glancing through it - there were pictures of the crew and the dogs from the day they set off on their journey documenting the crews demise through to the rescue over 1 year after they first becamed trapped in the ice. My parents gave me the book for Christmas but it was a difficult read for me at that point and it took me a long time to get through it, so now, 5 years later I have pulled it out and am well into it, reliving some memories from my early teen years and once again being horrified and awe struck at the journey of the Karluk and it's crew. It's truly an amazing story of survival and friendship and the necessity to stick and work together when things get tough. It took strong leadership and cooperation from all of those involved and I really can't think of too many instances where people in today's world are actually looking at situations like these and doing the same thing. I wonder what things would be like and how we would react if we were in the same situation as the crew of the Karluk and how many of us would have the coping skills and will-power to make it out alive?

Speaking of the arctic, ice and cold and being trapped in ice, it seemed as though it was going to warm up and melt all of our snow this past week. We had two very warm days and a lot of the snow in town was melted but not here and now it's dipped below freezing again and the tempretures for the next week are supposed to remain below freezing so I guess my winter wonderland here at home will remain so for awhile yet.

As a final note - you should all listen to Adiemus and the choral music of Karl Jenkins.

From Emily Grossman
Posted on January 28, 2007 at 3:03 AM

That's funny, I was just cleaning off my computer desktop do I could see my wallpaper better.

We worry about the snow when it gets warm, too. It looks like we don't have anything to worry about, though.

From Emily Grossman
Posted on January 28, 2007 at 3:05 AM

I also found this funny cartoon about being trapped in the ice and all that, but it's got some expletives, otherwise I'd post it.

From Scott 68
Posted on January 29, 2007 at 2:25 PM

that is a good choice of music you have for you recital, i always thought you had good taste - id go if ia had a chance

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January 28, 2007 at 2:47 AM

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