Saturday in New York

I spent the whole day yesterday in New York.

I went there on the train with a friend from Yale, M, who happened to be going in at the same time.  We had planned on meeting at the station at 7:30 but I accidentally set my alarm for 6pm instead of 6am.  I threw together an interview-appropriate outfit and rushed to grab a cab to the train station.

After a quite pleasant ride on the commuter rail and then the subway, we arrived in Lincoln Center.  M picked up his opera ticket, and I went to my lesson.  I'm currently figuring out what I'm doing next year, so I needed to meet with a long-term substitute musician in the New York Philharmonic, who teaches at one of the schools I'm looking at.  It was an amazing lesson.  I really learned a lot from just a short meeting with him!

Then I rushed across the plaza to the Metropolitan Opera, where I had a ticket to see Wagner's epic religiously allegorical opera Parsifal.

I don't often get a chance to go to the opera because of the expense of the tickets, but a professor who I get along with very well couldn't make it yesterday, so he had an extra ticket that he passed along to me.  I was way up in the highest row, but the sound was still amazing.  Sometimes it was a bit hard to see what was happening, but I think that's mostly because of the simplistic costume design for this production, in which most of the singers were wearing identical things, so it became pretty difficult to tell them apart.

Despite the length of this opera, I really enjoyed it! The show started at noon, and we only got out of there just before 6pm.  There were two intermissions.  The first act was good, but a bit long at two hours.  I started getting a bit uncomfortable when we still had about 20-30 minutes left.  The second act went by really fast - it was so enthralling that I didn't even notice how long it was! By the third act, however, I was getting ready for it to be over, and I didn't enjoy it as much as the first two.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Wagner's music, you MUST give the overture to this opera a try.  It is some of the most beautiful music ever composed, and it isn't as aggressively chromatic as some of his other music.  You can really hear the religiosity of this gorgeous music.

If you're interested in a more in-depth exploration of this opera, there is at least one full production available on YouTube, here:

After the opera, M and I reunited to go out to dinner with D, a friend of mine from high school and undergrad who goes to Juilliard now.  We had some delicious Chinese food and reminisced about all the crazy things we did back in the day.

I got back to New Haven pretty late at night, and then I had an exciting day today as well, which you will be hearing about in a separate post soon.

Until next time!

Lauren

This past week

Mainly this week was the same as the past few weeks - busy and full of auditions - so this will be a pretty brief post.  We finally went back to school after a bit of the snow melted, and just one day after returning to playing, I had an audition in New York.  Tomorrow I go to New York for another audition, and then on Monday, to Baltimore.  Only four more auditions to go!

Today was a very exciting day, though.  After teaching a lesson, in which my student (an undergraduate here who isn't majoring in music) showed huge improvement since the previous lesson, I met up with a former student for coffee.  S was my first horn student ever, who I taught when I was in high school.  Now he's about to graduate high school himself, and it looks like he'll be coming to Yale next year! It was really nice to see him, and to see what progress he has made in the past six years!  After that, I had my first lesson with A, my two-year-old student.  She is super cute.  We're learning basic musical concepts - like clapping to a beat, loud and soft, and high and low notes.  We sing lots of songs and dance around the room.  It's lots of fun!

Well, I'm sorry for the short post, but I better go.  I have to get up super early for my 11am audition, and I still haven't packed for my weekend away or anything.

Until next time!

Lauren

What I've been doing in the past two weeks

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been super busy in the past few weeks, which is why I haven't had a chance to write anything.  Here's what I was doing:

Shortly after my last post from northern Virginia, I took an all-day train back to New Haven.

The next day, I had to get up bright and early to take the commuter rail train to New York for an audition for a summer festival.  I took the excuse to visit for a while with one of my best friends, D, who I don't get to see very often.

Then, classes started that Monday.  This semester I'm super busy.  First, I'm working seven hours per week at two different public elementary schools, which doesn't sound like that much, but it's all super early in the morning - I have to leave my house before 7:30 or I'm late for work.  I also work as a TA for one of the School of Music classes, so that's another three hours per week. Then there's my classes, which together amount to five hours.  I'm taking two real classes this semester: instrumental arranging and Portuguese poetry.  The arranging class will be quite a bit of work, but should be fun - I really like making arrangements! I'm not that interested in poetry, but I love Portuguese, so I relish any opportunity to practice it.  Finally, I have a ton of rehearsals.  In addition to orchestra, which rehearses about eight hours per week, this semester I am in two chamber groups, so I have another six hours for that.  I hate to complain about this because I signed up for it myself, and I love all the activities I'm taking part in, but it still is a lot of work.

Then the auditions started again for real last weekend.  On Saturday, I had another audition in New York City.  Because a bunch of other Yale students were auditioning for it as well, I had company on the train ride down.  Afterwards, I was lucky enough to meet up with D again.  We enjoyed some delicious miniature beverages, but soon I had to be on my way.  I had to get back down to DC that night, because of the impending Inauguration Day traffic.  I got to relax and spend a lot of quality time with my parents on Sunday and Monday in preparation for my first doctoral audition on Tuesday, at the University of Maryland.  It was so nice to be at home with just my parents.  I can't even remember the last time I was home and neither of my sisters was!

My audition on Tuesday went pretty well, but I'm notoriously bad about judging my own playing, so really who knows.  On Thursday I had University of Georgia, and then on Thursday night I flew back to New York and took the train to New Haven.  I got back to my dorm room literally as the clock struck 4am.  I also had a concert on Friday night, yet somehow managed not to die of a caffiene overdose!

Now I have a few weeks off of auditions, though I still have all my normal school work to take care of.  My next audition isn't untill February 2.  But don't worry, I'll write again before then!

Until next time!

Lauren