praying for sunny days

ok. it’s been a while, and i’m sorry. thing is, i’m doing this thing called a “master’s degree” and that requires a lot of my time to do things like homework and reed making and practicing and the like.

but right now i’m sitting in a hotel room in los angeles watching a flat-screen HD TV, and relaxing. i went to pittsburgh last weekend for an audition at carnegie-mellon university and am in LA right now for double-duty.

last week, one of the school’s i’m applying to - the colburn school - had its deadline for first-round DVD submission. unfortunately, i had a lot of things go wrong leading up to the due date - i got the flu, and a key fell off my instrument when i was rushing to get the DVD made - and i didn’t get the disc in. cheryl was really encouraging (basically “it’ll be okay”), and it’s nice that the teacher at colburn was her teacher when she got her BM and MM.  i had previously scheduled a lesson with mr. beene (the teacher @ colburn) when i found out when my USC audition would be.  when this whole DVD thing came up, cheryl wasn’t too worried because we knew i would be playing for him today.

so i had my lesson with him.  it was amazing.  he’s amazing.  he was very complimentary of my playing and how i respond to suggestions.  and most importantly, he said that because of my lesson he was going to waive my DVD requirement (he’s also the dean of the school) and invited me to audition in march at their official audition week!!!

tomorrow afternoon is USC day - audition and then a lesson with the prospective teacher.  i’m pumped and stoked and happy right now, and hopefully that will translate into my audition and lesson tomorrow.  i now know so many more things about the pieces i’m playing (and will have to play for every single audition i’ll ever take in my life).  i came in knowing a lot and having a good background with what cheryl’s taught me, but mr. beene just enhanced that and brought out so many more nuances to make it all that much better.  

i am going to head on over to trader joe’s now.  stock up on the good stuff.  since i’m only in LA for today and tomorrow (i got in at 11 this morning and have to be back at the airport at 11 tomorrow night), i have plenty of room in my suitcase.  :)

i know.  i stink.  i told you i’d update and i never did.  but i don’t technically have to be anywhere until 4 this afternoon, so i have no excuse.  click the pictures to enlarge.  and let me know if that doesn’t work for you (i’ve changed how i update my blog, so if i need to revert back, i will, if nobody can see the full-sized images…i realize that you have to log in to facebook to see the full-sized images.  shoot me an e-mail if you don’t want to sign up for facebook - i have an account i don’t use that people think is an actual person named ginger watson, and can give you log-in details so you can see the pictures.)

i got to banff at the end of june, and immediately noticed the beauty surrounding me.  this is rundle mountain, as seen from the road leading to the music building.

within the first week, we (members of the bassoon studio…who else?!) went into town, went to the grocery store, saw wild sausages (tell me if you agree!), hiked up a few mountains (fell down a few mountains), saw a few rainbows, and bonded (and oh yeah, we played a bunch of bassoon…)

(rundle from town, with a church steeple in front)

(everything is captioned in french)

(tell me i’m not crazy by thinking upon first glance that this said “wild sausage” flavor)

(banff as seen from tunnel mountain)

(my battle scar from the first hike)

(the banff springs hotel in the foreground. this is just as we started the uphill part of the hike)

(we hiked to the hot springs.  this is the view from the walk up to the entrance)

(when we got to the hot springs, it started raining.  when we were in the hot springs, there were 2 rainbows that we had to look down on.  as we were walking back to campus, we saw a few more)

(a few shots of the studio…before the hike, getting cold outside of the water, staying warm in the water)

next post…week 2…

this will be quick.  i have class starting in 20 minutes.

i’ve been in banff for 2 weeks now, though it seems like it’s been a lot longer.  we’ve gone on plenty of hikes, jumped in glacial lakes, played a lot, and had tons of fun.  the bassoon studio gets along so well.  we pretty much don’t go anywhere unless everyone else is with us (with the exception of today…a few people are going up on a multiple-hour-long hike that i will not be taking in).

we had a bassoon band concert last tuesday, which was quite a fun treat.  then we went on a studio trip (with the oboes, though we did not socialize with them the entire day) to lake maraine and lake louise, finishing off the trip with plunges in lake agnes (at the top of a trail by lake louise) and lake louise.  it was cold, but tons of fun.  and the oboes basked in the glory of us calling them wusses for not coming in with us.

i’ll post pictures later today, hopefully.  there are tons on facebook.  if you can get there, my main photo page is here.  gotta run.  class soon.

These videos are of the bassoon section at Texas Music Festival this summer, which is held at UH.  We played Peter Shickele’s “Blue Set No. 2″ (which I will also perform on my Spring recital next year).  The first video is the first movement, entitled “Bassooner or Later”. The second is “Portlandia in Cerulean”, and the third is “Gang of Wolves”. Enjoy!

so i’ll be in banff for 7 weeks now.  it’s pretty much going to be amazing, i won’t lie.  and since i’ll be away for so long, i will greatly appreciate letters and packages.  and to help you out, here’s my address where i’ll be staying:

Robyn Watson
C/O The Banff Centre
Music & Sound Program
107 Tunnel Mountain Drive, Box 1020
Banff, Alberta, Canada, T1L 1H5

i’ll be there from june 30-august 18.  

application fee: $50 (though fully refunded)
round-trip plane ticket to new orleans: $200 (including a $60 flight-change fee)
cab ride from the airport: $17 (including tip and fuel surcharge…for a 1.6 mile trip)
time waiting in a hot holding room (total): 4 hours
time warming up/waiting in a practice room (total): 2 hours 15 minutes
number of auditionees in the beginning: 32 
number of auditionees in the 2nd round: 10
excerpts played: 7, plus a concerto exposition
time waiting for a cab to come get me so i could eat: going on 9 hours (i.e. it never came)
lunch that the workers were nice enough to get me (since the stupid cab didn’t come): $5
cab ride back to the airport: $7 (but shh.  he broke the rules)
getting into the semi-finals at my first professional audition: priceless 

yeah…i had a really long day today.  got up at 7:30 this morning to catch a flight to new orleans to partake in the louisiana philharmonic orchestra’s 2nd bassoon audition.  i decided to do it for the experience, not expecting to get much more than just that out of it.  i ended up getting to the 2nd round.  i played the best mozart concerto that i’ve every played in my life today.  and was really satisfied overall with everything else (obviously i did something right…).  i’m already back home and really tired, but really happy with the way everything went.  i didn’t get nervous (just a little crazy, though, hearing others in the warm-up rooms around me, but i just took really deep breaths and played arpeggios to get my mind off of them), and had a great reed (thanks, cheryl!), and played like a real bassoon player (because that is what i am…a REAL bassoon player.  not someone who just thinks they can play…i CAN play!).  so yea!

i knew it would be a fairly busy summer, as far as bassooning goes.  i had been accepted to (and accepted the offer for) the texas music festival, which is here at UH.  that lasts for a month (may 30-june 28), and includes 6 concerts (2 of the 4 are played twice), not including chamber music performances.  then mom and i were planning on going to the IDRS (international double reed society) convention in provo, UT, which is in the middle of july, for 5 days.  then we’re both playing in the pit for bach to broadway at church.

this morning, however, i got an e-mail saying i’d been accepted to the banff summer masterclass for bassoon, which is held at the banff centre in canada.  one of the teachers there is someone who i would really like a chance to study with, and have been contemplating pursuing an artists diploma with once i finish with my master’s degree, so to have a chance to work with him now is really awesome.  this program runs june 30-july 18.  i have to be there the 29th, so i am leaving houston the day after TMF ends.  

mom has told her sisters, who have indicated that they’d like to come “visit me” in banff, and auntie ellen has told us to just not deal with IDRS and we’ll have a “reunion” in canada.  ha.  

now i have even more to practice, but it’s good.  the folks who are in charge of the masterclass want me to let them know what rep i want to perform while there, and my teacher and i have decided on 2 standards (mozart concerto and saint-saens sonata) and a fun one (mignone concertino, which the teacher i am wanting to study with has recorded).  and i am taking an audition for a symphony in 2-1/2 weeks.  and for TMF, i am preparing the mignone for their concerto competition, which means i have a month to memorize it.  

so much going on, but i really really love it.  really really.

this morning was interesting, to say the very least.

i was babysitting my parents’ next door neighbors’ kids last night. they had long been asleep, so i was watching TV and texting some friends. our texting “match” ended just before the parents got home (or so i thought). i got home, checked my e-mail a bit, and got in bed at about 11:45. i went to sleep at about 12:30, expecting to get up at 6:30 (this semester, i don’t have the luxury of having a handicap parking pass, so i have to fight everyone else for the open parking spots. i have decided to leave my apartment every tuesday and thursday at 7 in order to get a spot and have time to practice. or write blog entries).

i was sound asleep and my phone started making a noise that sounded just like my alarm. so i opened my eyes, turned it off, dismissed it (so it wouldn’t bother me again), and got up. as i was doing that, i noticed that i had a new text from one of my friends whom i had been texting with last night, and it had a time stamp of 11:47. i didn’t think much of it.

i did all my usual morning things - brush teeth, shower, get dressed, etc. and was all ready to go. i opened my door and took my phone out of my jeans pocket to see how much time i had left before i had to leave. the clock on my phone said 2:15. i didn’t believe it. after all, my alarm had gone off, and i thought i had even put it on snooze, therefore having it go off again. i turned on my TV to check the time on it, and sure enough, it was 2:15. i grumbled and then went back to sleep (of course putting my PJ’s back on).

i realized when i got to school that apparently my alarm sound and my text message sound are the same, which is why i thought my alarm had gone off when the text came in (the network was apparently having difficulties, since it didn’t get the text to me until almost 3 hours after my friend sent it). i will be changing my text sound so this doesn’t happen again. the funniest thing about this whole thing (at least in my opinion) is that i was more awake when my “alarm” went off at 2:15 than when it did at 6:30. i pretty much hopped out of bed the first time, and wanted to go back to sleep the second. strange.

obviously my “resolution” to update more often hasn’t exactly happened (though 2 times in 1 month is pretty good for me, right?).  since school started back up, i’ve been swamped.  the quintet is playing in one of the 2 january operas this weekend, which had rehearsals starting the day before school started back up on the 14th.  since then, we’ve had 6 rehearsals (2 just orchestra, 2 with the singers sitting behind us, and 2 dress rehearsals), and 1 performance, with 2 more performances this weekend (saturday and sunday).  i’m really really looking forward to sunday night when it’ll be over (not that i haven’t thoroughly enjoyed playing in the “psychological thriller” that is The Turn of the Screw (videos of the TV adaptation, if you so wish to watch it, can be found here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, and part 12.  i didn’t warn you how long it was, did i?).

on top of the opera, the quintet is giving a recital on the 2nd of february, so we’ve added rehearsals almost every single day to work on all of our music.  a total of nearly 30 hours extra.  it’s a lot, but it was (is) needed.   add to all that, the fact that both the school orchestra and clear lake symphony have started back up, it means i’m very short on sleep right now.

the biggest thing (to me, personally) that’s going on right now is auditions for summer music festivals.  it means that i have to immerse myself in orchestral excerpts for hours during my practice time every day.  i had my first audition this past wednesday.  my next one is sunday morning (what do you get when you ask for an afternoon audition time?  11:50 AM).  then i have a nearly 2- week-long break before the next one on february 8, and the final one on the 11th.  i’m submitting one taped audition, which i recorded most of yesterday, and spent time (too much time) last night cleaning it up a bit.   this is all really good for me, though.  i finally really truly feel like a performance major (not that i didn’t last semester, but it wasn’t all going on at one time last semester).  i’m enjoying it (even though it is quite taxing in many ways…sleep, being the main one), and am still kind of in awe of myself…i didn’t think i had any sort of work ethic, as far as progressing on the bassoon goes, and now my tuesday, thursday, and friday mornings are spent in the practice room starting at 7:30 (hey…the need for a parking spot trumps the need for sleep, in my opinion).  i feel like i’m “getting it” now…i’m understanding what it takes and what i need to do, and i’m adjusting accordingly.  it’s frustrating at times (it’s not the most exciting thing to be sitting in an orchestra pit at 11 at night going over the same passages over and over again), but the end result is something to be proud of. 

i decided that i didn’t want to continue to pay a whole lot for my website.  so i switched from paying $10/mo to paying $5/mo.  in the craziness of the switch, i thought i might have lost my entire blog (cause i couldn’t for the life of me get it to work).  but thanks to the hard work of my friend geof, all has been restored (save a few images, but i can get over that - it was my fault those didn’t transfer).  so welcome to my new, cheaper blog.  lol.  maybe my new year’s resolution will be to update this more often.  ha.