April 2005

April 30, 2005 07:44

This morning at 1:31 AM I officially became legal to post on violinist.com because I turned 13! (Sorry about all that illegal posting for the last 11 months.) I opened presents this morning. Among my favorites were... tickets to the musical Wicked on Broadway in August!!! We got the CD and stuff and we've been listening to it for a really long time. It's definitely one of my favorites, if not my favorite musical. I'm so excited! We'll go see it after Encore and before Kinhaven.

Another present I got was a MINI IPOD! It's PINK and I love it! When my mom ordered it, she asked them to engrave "alicelizard's" above the word IPOD on the back! My sister loaded a lot of music on it for me in advance. It will be really helpful if I can get a lot of concertos and stuff on it so next time I won't have to spend forever looking for the CD!

About a month ago we bought new shoes for Calla for her birthday on April 14, and we also bought some for me that would be a birthday present. But when we opened them this morning, the box had in it two right shoes that were different sizes and different colors! This surprised us a lot! We're going to see if we can take them back this morning and get the matching shoe.

The kitten is purring happily on my lap. She is so cute and she and Mr. Bad, the dog, are getting along splendidly. We still don't have an official name for her, but last night Madeline suggested Maybelline (we got the idea from a drawing Madeline did when she was 4, she wrote her d's backwards and signed it Mabeline.) Also Madeline suggested we could call her Maybe for short! (She got this from a tv show she watches, but I think it's a cute idea.) Calla is reluctant, but we will conquer in the end.

I started working on the Siciliano (sp?) in the g minor sonata and the third movement of the Wieniaski. I'm trying to think of some stuff I can brush up and take with me to Encore. My teacher suggested redoing the Bruch. I really only did the third movement in performances and stuff, but I don't think the first and second will be too hard to get going.

--alice

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April 27, 2005 07:37

Just a quick entry because I have to go, but my mom talked to Linda Cerone yesterday via phone, and although we're not 100% sure I'm studying with her at Encore, we're keeping our hopes up! She sounds really nice, and I've heard that from other people too. She said it would be OK if I went to Ireland for a week or so in the middle of camp--we might go to represent the movie (Rittenhouse Square documentary) in the Galway Film Festival! That would be really cool, I've never been out of the country except when I was little and we went to Mexico. Another plus to studying with Linda would be she has small hands, like I do, and she could help me with some of the problems I have with stretching and things. (My violin teacher at home is about 6' 5"!)
I decided to buy a bow by Nurnberger, as opposed to another French one by Gillet. I liked both of them, and the Gillet may have been prettier, but I really prefer bigger, thicker sticks with more power, and when you press down the hair doesn't touch the bow.

--alice

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April 21, 2005 05:44

This past week has been really nice out, and I am suffering from spring fever.

So, we decided to buy the Osterud violin from David Bromberg's shop. I'm really excited! This will be my first really good, full-sized (kind of! it's slightly smaller) violin that I own! Also, because it's not quite as expensive as it could be, I can get a nice bow! For the past few months I've been using a carbon fiber, so this will be a nice upgrade! I'm so happy! :-) Today we're going back to the shop to return the other violin and try some bows.

On April 9, there was the premiere of the documentary I'm in, Rittenhouse Square, at the Prince Theater. There was this huge poster of my head in the lobby, it was really crazy! The show was sold out, and the audience seemed to like it. Of course, it was really hard for me to watch myself on screen, especially when it was myself almost two years ago. I didn't play anything really hard, but I guess it sounded pretty good for how old I was then. I don't like how I look, but I guess nobody would! I don't say anything throughout the entire thing except at one part, where I'm playing the first page of the Mendelssohn, and Robert Downey and Max Raab, the director and producer, are watching. The wind starts to blow the pages around, and Bob tries to help by turning back to the right page, but it's the wrong page, so I start shaking my head furiously, still playing, but then he turns forward too many pages, and I keep nodding and shaking my head until the right page is in front of me again! It's actually pretty funny! When I finish, I say, "That's as much as I know...That was fun!" But it doesn't sound like my voice at all, it sounds like someone else, which is strange. Oh well. Afterwards we went to the reception in some art deco gallery, which was strange but interesting, and there were a few women wearing hats with red wire spirals and feathers, who asked me to autograph the poster! It was a really fun night.

And a few days ago, my quartet (with the twins and my sister) played for the Settlement Gala which is to raise money for this head-start program which goes through Settlement. The stage, well actually a podium, was really small, it barely fit out four chairs. So it wasn't quite what we were used to but we managed and played pretty well. Before we performed we spent at least an hour in the bathroom doing changing and doing hair, then reminisced about Kinhaven, which the Tabbys aren't coming back to this year. Even if they did they'd be with Madeline at the Senior Session.

On the 30th is my birthday! I have orchestra and in the evening I'll probably see my friends do their ballet version of the Wizard of Oz.

Recently the kids in my family have become obsessed with the musical Wicked, which is based on a novel I really want to read. Kristin Chenoweth, who we LOVE and know from other musicals played Glinda, the good witch, in it. The plot's really confusing and I can't exactly figure it out just from listening to the CD, which is all we have to go on for now. But it's something like the Wizard of Oz and Dorothy gets mixed in there somehow...it's really unclear though. Anyway, on Thursdays I don't usually go to school, but I was going to this week. However I decided to forgo it in favor of practicing, so I better do that!
--alice

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April 5, 2005 17:34

It was such a nice day today! It was really warm and sunny and pretty...but of course it will start raining again in two days. Oh well....
So last Saturday I did this Warminster Competition in Bucks County. I played Zigeunerweisen, and at first I wasn't too happy with the beginning (later on when I thought about it, I was pretty happy with it because it was really musical) but the Allegro was really good. It was a rainy day and I was a bit grumpy then about how I had played, so we really wanted to get out of there. So we rushed out the door before I got a chance to be obsessive about making sure I packed everything. For the rest of the day I was feeling too depressed to practice, also about various other stuff, but when I opened my music bag later, I discovered that not only my metronome but my copy of Zigeunweisen, with all the bowings and fingerings and notes and everything wasn't there. I looked everywhere but couldn't find it, and was really upset because I felt I really needed the music too. Luckily we had a clean copy for the competition so I was just about to put all the fingerings in that one when the competition people called saying they found it. The metronome was found too, but the music teacher who uses that room says it belongs to him, so we can't have it back. Hmph. But thank goodness we got the sheet music back!
Also, today we went to Wilmington to a violin shop owned by David Bromberg. We took the Alf violin there to see if we could get the sound post adjusted by Whitney Osterud , who we met for the first time. He has SUCH a good ear, and he would say things like, "Play a scale up the Ging....the sound is a little dryer with a hint of sweetness...OK try it again...now it's flatter but we lost the clarity." My mom said it sounded like he was describing wine! By the time he had tinkered with it a bit, it was a tremendous difference in the sound from when we had started! After that, my mother asked David Bromberg if he had any violins that were small full sizes, because I have a small hand, and he came up with six! We couldn't believe it! None of the other places we went had six violins my size that were actually playable. Well, we eliminated them one by one, but got down to three and couldn't eliminate any more. There was one from London, an Italian one, and one made by Whitney Osterud himself. The London one was brighter, the Italian sweeter, and the Osterud both. When my teacher comes back from England next week, I'll play them for him.
The violin shop was such a neat little place; we saw the workshop in the back which was amazing, all these tools and stuff and a marble surface that we were told had been measured as flat to a half a millionth of an inch. There were all sorts of cool instruments like one weird one with a really detailed carving of Paganini on the back, and a double case with marble flowers all over it.
Of course, the reason for all this good luck is because the odometer on our van turn from the 139,999 to the 140,000 and out of the unlucky number!

--alice

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More entries: May 2005 • March 2005

April 2005

April 30, 2005 07:44

April 27, 2005 07:37

April 21, 2005 05:44

April 5, 2005 17:34

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