Phoenix?

Miss this creative outlet....maybe a return is necessary.

Seven

Seven is a lucky number I think.

Today I hold in my hand a sonata. One that was written for me. Four movements. And someone else wrote a three movement piece for me. So that is seven movements. The really cool thing is that both composers live here in Vermont.

So I have three thoughts....

1. Guess I am sort of worthy of being a violist in Vermont now.

2. I am blessed.

and

3. I have a lot of practicing to do now! Gulp.

Incredibly Short Stories VI

The Campagnoli project is going extremely well in the practice room. Now the challenge is blogging about it. A week (or two) behind in posting. Not to worry-this weekend it will happen.

I finally had a good night's sleep for the first time in 10 days. This will help with the blogging thing...

Middle son may not be autistic (PDD-NOS) after all. This gives me great joy. He can stay home with me in the mornings. He did wonderfully with his program the last few months and he is very, very close to normal.

I heart Facebook. That's all about that.

I still like this blog. This year it will become more of a kitchen sink/ general life rambling kind of thing. It may even become slightly more personal. The other blog will talk about the nitty gritty of practicing.

Looking to a new year

This has to be a wonderful way to see the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008.

Listening to the Faure Piano Quartet and dreaming about the wonderful music to play next year...

Have a Fantastic New Year!

Modulation

It's been a great two weeks. For various reasons. And I hardly touched the viola!

I went for many walks.
I played a lot of Scrabulous (and still terrible at it).
I listened to many non-classical recordings.
I threw many virtual snowballs on Facebook. And updated incessantly.
And communicated with old friends again...

It was all splendid fun. All the snowstorms seemed to make the entire month festive since all routines were tossed aside. And it will continue throughout the next week for the holidays. Wonderful...

And yet my mind turns to the new task(s) at hand. Today I added the Janacek to my mp3 player so that I can listen to it while walking. (For some reason Windows Media Player with my player puts all track ones together, twos and so on. Janacek choral music makes an interesting mix with Erasure, BNL, and Queen. Hmmm.)

And the upcoming project is taking shape. Maybe I will give just a tiny hint. I have been feeling lately that my technique is shallow. That when I learned pieces in the past, I would learn the techniques along with the piece. I've really never studied something other than pieces in great detail. I want to approach things a little differently this coming year. To give some depth and security. And fill in the gaps.

See you in the new year! All will be revealed then...

Day 17-Check

Recording today:

Handel Messiah no. 11-check!
Romeo and Juliet-check!
Campagnoli no.31-check!

That's all for now. Recording done for today and now off to Hanover for rehearsals...

See you tomorrow. There will be more time to write then.

Day 16-Looking Forward

Today (and the last week) has been quite a downer. I don't know if it's the traveling or the lack of sunlight, but I feel quite sad and angry. Or maybe it's the cold...weather and condition.

That's enough rant for now.

Listened to excerpts of the Janacek on Amazon. And if I wish to buy it as an MP3, I can. But I'm not sure I want to. The sound quality of the singers is um, a little nasal for my liking. (Very particular about good singers.) And it's the original version of the winds and piano. It's also interesting that the articulations are quite different and the tempos are slightly slower. Still it gave me a bit of confidence that I am fairly close to performing it decently next April. Now it's time to get to the next level. And it's time to rest it for a month and get back to it in the third week of December. (And buy the score in the meantime. There's lots of imitation between the singers and the viola.)

And the recording today? It was the Campagnoli caprice no. 31 again. I worked though most of the middle section and made nice progress. In spite of the fact that my mood was very stressed and sad, I was able to still work. Good because the mood is temporary but the work remains to be done regardless. In the past if I had a bad day, it would be frequently turn out to be a day of non-practicing. Sometimes it would even extend to a stretch of a few weeks. Not a great way to become an artist. The work and practicing should be for a lifetime and a process-not a goal in itself. After having children, I realized that it was important to practice every day even for a few minutes. Also it was important to always try to improve and learn new things to feed the artistic soul. These ideas sustained me when I was not allowed to work for almost two years. And now it still does with the new challenges facing me.

Looking forward to two things in the near future. This week I will be in an orchestra for a couple of Messiah performances. I have played it about 40 times and never get tired of it. The conductor will be first rate. And a strange surprise for the violist. In no. 11 (the bass aria "The People That Walked in Darkness"), the viola part has many *treble* clef, violin-range passages in this particular edition. Strange. Good thing for looking at the part ahead of time. The rest is easy and the violas are tacet quite a bit so we get to see the violinists do their gymnastics in the tenor aria.

Also thinking a lot about a new project after this one. Have decided on something and it is rather silly, but I need to do it. Relates to that always trying to learn new things issue. When it's ready to go, I'll let you know.

'Til tomorrow!

Back to the Drawing Board

Today it's back to work.

Day 15-ready for a break

Yay Day 15...

Fortunately practicing and recording was early in the morning because things got very very busy. Picking up food, realizing that I had someone else's box full of frozen food), a 3-hour doctor's appointment for the kids, travel, cooking, preparing for tomorrow's snow storm, and looking enticingly at the food intended for the someone else. (didn't know there was a such a thing as vegan pot pies. Neat.) And blogging right now.

I worked on the first four lines of the Campagnoli no.31. Triplets are not very strong for me. I tend to delay the second note of the triplet and it sounds like an eighths and two sixteenths. This study will be good for me.

After thought, I will end part 1 of the recording challenge today as originally planned. The reason, I take vacations very seriously. My husband has a week off work and it's time to hang out as a family with unstructured time. Will be back on the blog the 25th for part 2. Have a great Thanksgiving week!

Day 14-tiny observation

It was one of those days where every minute was tightly scheduled until an half-hour ago.

Not a bad or particularly stressful day, but a busy one.

Needed to record-I'm so close to finishing the first half of the challenge.

Chose the Janacek pizzicato parts which happen to be very difficult.

It's getting better but some notes are getting lost-in pizz, every note should be crystal clear. Back to work with the metronome tomorrow afternoon (after another active day).

Day 12-a turn around

Have to be honest...the first part of today was terrible. A playground trip turned bad when we got there and found that it was closed for the winter as of November 1.

(And we wonder why so many children are obese in N. America...though I do remember that the playgrounds in Thunder Bay were never closed and it would be -30C for 2 months. Okay end of mini rant/comparison...)

The worst thing that children with autism have is the inability to adapt to transitions and changes in routine. It can create incredible havoc in a family and limit what they can do. My oldest (7) could not understand why we had to leave his favourite playground in order to find another one. Anyway we didn't make it that far. He proceeded to scream high pitches for the next 45 minutes. The length of the car ride home. Another pleasant day.

[And that's one of the reasons why I have fantastic concentration in performance. There's no need to practice viola with the radio on full blast. I have my own distractions always at hand. For example this past Saturday during the first movement of the Magnificat, all the lights went out and we all just kept playing for about 90 seconds for memory. Didn't even faze me. That's a piece of cake compared to a normal day for me.]

The next few hours I felt sorry for myself. And I really couldn't shake it. And I had a student coming for a lesson. Had to pull together. So I took the viola out of the case and recorded the Campagnoli study without warming up.

And it was really really good. Bordering on virtuosity save for three measures. Metronome came out and the offending measures were fixed. Okay now I know no. 38. Will work on a new one starting tomorrow. A nice happy one in d minor. (Just kidding...)

Then my son made this on the rug in the living room and it cheered me up in spite of the bad day. And gave me the tiniest hope that maybe things will get better. And tonight my husband got some good news regarding work.

So here's the picture. Back to Janacek tomorrow!

Day 11-part 2

More Romeo and Juliet this evening...and the rhythms are getting much better.

Maybe this is also from the fact that last night I was sitting right in front of the drummer. And I could feel every bass drum note he played because the floor was rickety. Let me just say I know the Conga rhythm pattern really well now...

Day 11-part 1

Various people have been recommending this over the other recorder I was hankering for.

Still haven't decided which one to buy. The new one is much more expensive. But the sound quality has to be the important deciding factor. And I have to keep up the recording routine first.

Still haven't recorded yet today. I do plan to in about an hour (using that loophole) when the husband is watching football and the kids are finally asleep. Something about the time changes that make them hyper. I guess that's the reason to call them "monkey bears"....

More later!

Incredibly Short Stories V/Day 5 recording

Young child awake at 3 a.m. and up until 10:30 a.m. Put only to sleep by car ride driven by very tired mother. Awake again at noon and very cranky. And still awake now at 7:15 p.m....

This equals quite a Bad day.

Lots of teaching today. However that went okay.

Conjured up Galamian in yesterday's post. Today received this book in the mail from the people at Meadowmount as a thank you for sending a student this past summer. Bizarre. And amazing...

Recorded parts of Janacek in between lessons. Needs a lot of slow co-ordinated practicing. Don't have it today. Case in point-put coat on wrong child and didn't notice until therapist pointed it out. Still took 30 seconds to register.

That's all.

Good night.

Challenges

For the last few years my life has become more and more boxed in. And one of the challenges has been finding time to practise the viola.

(I know maybe this should go in the other blog. However I am still talking about the viola here.)

People on the outside think that I am strong. This is not true. I am resilient with a dash of optimism and a bit of stupidity thrown in the mixture. They see a mom with three kids all in various places on the autism spectrum and think how does she cope. And the answer is I don't. Except on a very small scale. Planning my life in fifteen-minutes increments. When the oldest boy has a screaming fit for the ninth time in the day and the youngest starts banging his head against the floor when I turn around to attend to another child, sometimes the best way for me to cope is to think that in fifteen minutes maybe things will be better. That's the optimist in me...and the fool.

Also you can do a lot in fifteen minutes. Like chores and practising the viola. I do practise about an hour a day. However I break it up into smaller pieces. Scales and studies for the first part, and pieces during the other parts. This works for me because it forces me not to get too emotionally attached to the music. If I have this constraint, I have to still learn the part and do it the most efficient way as well. (Was it Stravinsky that talked about creativity within limits? Not sure...)

Just get the job done.

This is the way I've been practising for the last seven years. And I have had success with playing the viola.

But now more demands are made from me from the outside. Autism professionals will be around all the time. It is difficult for me since I'm a private person. Sometimes I feel like my home is not really mine after all. And time will become more regimented with my youngest son starting full time DTL therapy in a few weeks. Every minute will be scheduled for the next nine months. Practising will have to be scheduled even more efficiently. However I will work with this challenge since I'm an old pro. There has been challenges like this for the last five years. And I've practised for that as well.

Life

...is very busy right now.

Actually the viola playing aspect is going extremely well right now. The concerts last weekend went great although not perfectly. We have a third chance for elusive perfection next Friday in Norwich.

It's the everything else that has been difficult these last few weeks. Mostly to do with autistic children. Difficult transitions here and I'm trying to keep on top of everything with limited success.

I have been thinking about blogging and this blog. I think I want to keep this blog mainly about music in Vermont and the practising of the viola. But there is so much more I want to say and can't say it here.

So I set up another blog. If you wish to read, please let me know at elizreid (living at Hotmail) and I'll add you to the list. Lurkers and Facebook friends are welcome. I warn you though, there will be occasional negativity and ranting there....

More about the concert

Here's a Times Argus article about the concerts this weekend. Been rehearsing a lot!

My Concerts

Been trying to post this all day...figured out how finally by using Picassa.

Too tired to write words today-maybe let the picture speak for itself.

(Just click on the image to read the words.)

Soon

...I will blog again.

Probably on Thursday.

The weather has been unbelievably beautiful here for the last two weeks. The best time for weather in New England is the fall-but this has to be the best I've seen since moving here five years ago.

So I have been walking every day to get my Vitamin D dose for the year 2007. Because soon the bad weather will return.

Soon the rain will come back. Tomorrow maybe? And then I will write again....

Though I have been practicing a lot as well. There's a big concert next month and an even bigger one in six months. Will tell you soon...

Very short post

I will be back online on Tuesday.

It's been an interesting (although unwanted) experiment.

BTW the microwave also died last week. Though unlike the computer, it's not a necessity (will get a new one next year maybe).We have embraced the Slow Food movement as a result. The kids are thrilled. It was cause of celebration when I baked cookies a couple of days ago. The two older boys sang the "C is for Cookie" song the entire time the oven was on. Very cute...the future Broadway singers!

Also practicing a C major 4 octave scale. And it's going well. What else? Penderecki and a Vieuxtemps etude for viola and piano, I *could* actually play in public. Cool..

Listening to a lot of music. But not classical. Mostly the Police, Queen, and BNL.

So that's my virtual vacation.

And I want it to end...now.

Oh well-talk to you next week everyone.