who knew?

so, it's week 3. and it's as hectic as ever.
the weekend was fairly uneventful. we sang beautifully at chapel, an anthem by Stainer,quite short,but beautiful. (Phil: "there won't be a dry eye here!"It was really beautiful.)

Went to the Faculty Orchestra Concert on Monday night, held at the Melbourne Town Hall. Seriously, almost the entire Con turned out! they played Bernstein's "Overture to Candide", Schumann's Konzertstucke for 4 horns and orchestra (with four HOT horn players,like, they were brilliant musicians, not hot in the sense that they were a treat for the eyes too,necessarily..) as well as Stravinsky's Petrouchka (1947). it wasa great concert, for a number of reasons:
the music is really good repertoire
i had friends playing in the orchestra
melbourne town hall is very nice
inspiration to practice horn
interesting conductor

see? many good reasons. we (most of the con) went out afterwardsto Young and Jackson on flinders/swanston. it's a prettynice place :) we had basically the whole upstairs bit to ourselves. there were couches and all, onewhole segment being taken up by a plethora of instruments and dumped bags/coats/other accessories. such musicians..! i didn't intend to stay out that long (on a monday night..!) i came home at 12-ish....!but it was a good night, a good concert and i got to meet a whole heap of people. great :)

so, tuesday iwaspretty much quite buggered, but you get that if you've had a too-big night the night before. i had my second brass lesson, which didn't go quite as well as i had hoped, and practiced for, but i was getting somewhere, which is a good thing!i can now play "twinkle twinkle little star" in two keys as well as some other simple exercises. my range (if it's good) is about an octave and half, so i think i'm doing ok here!

caroline called up tocancel my lesson yesterday. i'm a bit pooped about it, because it's already week 3 and i haven't hada piano lesson. it's a good thing that i got my pieces nice and earlyand we went through and put all the fingering inbefore the holidays, but frankly,i'm gettinga bit unmotivated because i don't know whether i'm practicing it right ornot. so,i'm not reallyfree forthe rest of theweek, soi'm venturing to middle park on saturday toher place and hopefully having that long-awaited pianolesson! she's given me insructions and stuff about which tram to take andwhere to get off, so hopefullyitwill all be ok..! (this is my big adventure...!)

i met these american girls last week as well as on sunday,and unfortunately they flewout of melbourne this morning,so there was a bbq with them and student life on wednesday. it was a pretty horrible, fickle day,but the snags went on. it was really good to see them again...i met a bunch of american students, which was really cool. it wasa pity that i didn't meet them earlier, because i would have LOVED to get to know thembetter...just a sad thing that sometimes stuff like this happens...time is often too short!

so, thewillie quick dinner was last night. it was an alright night,i was just really reallytired. youknow how ifyou have an off-day at uni? well, i don't knowif you're like me, but schedule everything else you have to do on that day, so wednesdayturned out to be busy run-around, work, catch-up, do-lots-of-work (intention) day. so bythe time i gotto dinner, it was no wonder that i had little energy to don black-tie gear, sit through dinner and forgive me, but i started closing my eyes during the address by the jesuit preist..! (he was interesting, i was just really tired!) and then whatdid ido? yes, i went to the turn, and because i was really excited about the red frog people, and wanted to listen to the CDs that won the turn-cd competition, i stayed at the turn for longer than i intended. i seriously think i need about 30 hoursa day. eitherway i'm fairly burnt out..!

today'sconcert class was hideously short....dr holthamhas probably never been that embarrassedby the lackof people wanting to play. so, i've putmyname downfor next week. i don't think i'm ready yet, andi'm deathly afraid,but i've got to do it sometime, sothis is it.
so, ifyou are free sometime from 11-1 next thursday, come along to melba hall atthemusic faculty to hear me playsolo inan actualperformance. (time will be narroweddown to nearest half hour upon request..) i went to ormond to help lauren with some notes from earlier this week, andhad lunch at ormond. it is a beautiful place :) really. it's somuch more harry-potter-ish than queen's (althougheverybody says queen's is harry-potter-ish...idon't quite seeit..) stupidly, i was wearing my distinctive green and gold queen's jersey..probably notthe best idea this m0rning...buti couldn't take it off because i was cold enough as it was! anyway, i met one of lauren'sfriends, who's a music/arts student (totally cool :)ilove meeting musos. :P ), a composition student, saw Stephen MacIntyre (who, incidentallyon monday, played the ravel piano concerto in G for us inpiano class. oh, andhewas accompanied byRaymond Yong, who i introduced myselfto after the class...raymond is now taking conducting at the con, is a former student of stephen's, and actually comes from perth, and used to studyunderstephanie coleman, my former teacher. incidentally, mycurrentteacher, caroline, knows of steph coleman through stephen and raymond, so it's all gone around in one big circle....of pianists! ikinda feel special knowing all these people!) and i also saw heli simpson, that chick who was inthe australian team for the biology olympiadin china, and also of saddle club 'fame'. totallycool...(i also saw tamsin, but i don't think shesaw me..)

ok, so that's myrambling news. oh, and we sight-read through most of stravinsky's Firebird Suite in sinfonia this evening. you know, i was fully gettinginto stravinsky,having studied some stuff ofhis in Impressionism to post-modernism,and hearing some works performed,such as on monday night, and also ina radio broadcast of theAYO concert from last week....and then itried to play stravinsky(no less, onVIOLIN..!!) anddecided that stravinsky for meis clearlynot eh way to go...sigh..

ok, back to work....