Skip to main content

About that Masterclass ...

 I know I've mentioned the masterclass here a few times, but I don't think I've said much about it.

It's going to be conducted by pianist Orion Weiss, who will be performing with the Augusta Symphony the night before (Sept. 27). Which reminds me, I need to get tickets. 

OK. I just took a break from writing this to buy a couple of symphony tickets. $158 -- ouch! I could have gotten balcony seats for just $60, but I'm so deaf and my eyes are bad. Anyway, the deed is done.

So, four area students will be participating in this masterclass. An 11-year-old, a 16-year-old, a 17-year-old, and me. I saw the pieces being played, and one is Liszt's Consolation 3, which I played back in high school. It was one of my first "two-against-three" pieces.

Two of the pieces seem to be intermediate/early-advanced, and I think the Consolation and my Chopin are probably comparable, as far as level. So it should be a good little masterclass. Mr. Weiss will also perform at the end, so that'll be good.

I'm excited about it. Also a little nervous. I'd hoped to really double down on getting the Chopin back up to speed in August and September, but that hasn't happened. So now I'm doing best. I know the piece well, have known it now for several months, so I should be OK.

The big unknown is whether my mind will go blank when I'm playing in front of an audience. It nearly always does. I need to practice playing for people ... yeah, sometime in the next 16 days.

So, that's the masterclass. Wish me luck!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Eureka! Secondary Dominant!

I am such a nerd, and I love being a nerd! Today I was working on Section 5 of You Are My Sunshine, specifically on getting this section up to performance level. In other words, I was practicing being a performer , not an arranger . But then, of course, I came up with another idea. I had just played the delicate sixths and descending rag rolls of "when skies are gray" (I chord) and then moved to the parallel octaves of "you never know, dear" (leading to  IV). The shift sounded abrupt to me. Harsh. It needed something. It needed musical WD-40. Something to ease the hinge between textures. And then I stumbled upon it! Right before moving to IV, I can slip in a V7/IV — a secondary dominant! So I tried it, and it sounded so good that I actually yelled "Secondary dominant!" out loud in my house like I was Archimedes discovering water displacement in the bathtub. It's such a small thing. One little chord. But it smooths that transition, leaning the harmony ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Rusty Lock and Key

I'm in a room. There's a door in front of me. On the other side of that door is a whole world of adventure and imagination and joy and delight, but for the moment, I'm locked in this gray little room. The door itself has a lock that is all rusted. I've tried to open it in the past, but I've never gotten very far. Sometimes I try to scrape the rust off the lock. I also have a rusty old key that I occasionally try to polish. Each time, after I've made a little progress, I'll put it into the keyhole in hopes of opening the door. It turns a half a millimeter or so, but the brief excitement at my progress dies quickly when I realize, once again, the lock isn't opening. I set the old key aside, and from there I can forget about the door, the lock, and the world outside, for months—years, even. But then something happens—I hear birdsong, or I catch a glimpse of color—and I pick up the key and start picking away at the stubborn rust. That dark little room is my ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Well.

It looks like "A Sort of Notebook" is an ex-blog. I'm not going to post a link to it because it's been taken over by spammers. It's Saturday night and I love merlot. No, I'm not drunkly. I went to a 50th birthday party tonight and had two lovely glasses of merlot. Then we went to a toy store. (I should never go to a toy store after two glasses of merlot, and after running eight miles. I bought some yellow teeth, a remote-control fart machine, two crazy pencils, and a present for my future niece who has yet to be conceived.) We went to an art gallery earlier that happens to have a grand piano and I played the Bach Prelude. Oh my, but it's sounding nice! Deborah (my piano teacher) has a grand (I can't remember the manufacturer. Forgive me.) that she wants to sell me for $8,800, or $100 a key. Hubster thinks that's too much. I told him it's a steal--we get the pedals, and the wood, and the wheels, and the bench for free! Lightning struck last nigh...
6 comments
Read more