Such a busy time!

The past few weeks have been quite interesting for me musically. I spent last week performing in the pit (on the modern bassoon) for a new opera called “Lady of the Night” and, on top of my studies, managed to get out to Montreal for a lesson.

The lady of the Night was an interesting experience to say the least. The opera included fifty students of one particular singing teacher in the area, who sung at the beginning of the performance, and, with the introduction of every new singer, I began to see (or rather, hear) the style of singing which she was teaching to her students. The music was particularly difficult to play and put together for the pit orchestra, but we pulled through by opening night. The orchestra was full of great people and I hope to play with them again soon!

Do you always take time to…

Well… I see that I’ve been away from all of it a little too long, again. Sorry!
I’ve recently been swamped with various performances and mid terms and such and I’ve been finding it quite hard to practice all of this things that I’ve wanted to in a 2.5-hour sit-down.
Because I’ve had a solo performance every two weeks for the past month and a half, I’ve spent much more time working on the pieces themselves rather than exercises and scales. Although I feel that this extra time on the music seemed to pay off come concert time, I do wish that I could spend more time on my exercises in a practice session.

A follow-up to an earlier post

I`m sorry I’ve been away from the blog for so long, I’ve had quite a lot of work and practicing to do, and I haven’t had much to talk about either. That will change right now.

So as I had mentioned in a previous post about early instrument affecting my modern instrument, I now have noticed the reverse as well.

The past three weeks have almost entirely circled around the modern bassoon. This past Tuesday I had a concert for two elementary school classes and I played first movements from concerti by Vivaldi, Mozart and the frist two movements of “Sonatine” by Alexandre Tansman. If you know the Tansman, you’d probably understand why I basically shunned the baroque instrument for quite some time leading up to the concerts.

By the time it came for my occasional lesson with Mathieu, he noticed that I was holding the (baroque) reed quite firmly in-between my lips. He felt that I wasn’t making my instrument resonate 100% although it was playing in tune and musically. I also have noticed recently that the muscles just below my eyes feel sore after playing on the larger baroque reed. We spent most of the lesson on loosening up my embouchure and it was very helpful. You could really hear the difference between an 85% resonant bassoon and one that was resonating fully.

Interesting how about a month ago I was more concerned about the baroque bassoon affecting my modern playing but not the other way around… 

An idea for period costume

This coming Saturday I’ve been invited to a ‘50s themed party. One of my roommates, Marissa, and her friend took me out to value village (i say took me out, ‘tis not 3 minutes walk from our house) to look for costumes. I managed to find a great short-sleeved, collared shirt and suspenders for cheap and, as I left the store, I got thinking.