Tag Archives: piccolo

Day 77 – December 16th – Playing for the Gardeners

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Today has been a busy one, and I’m definitely ready for an early night! It was also a day of ups and downs, and of trying to figure out whether a few of the downs were just in my head.

Class this morning went well for the warm-ups. IfI trust myself and don’t get flustered, I can play a lot of the exercises, and now I’m also trying to use mental practice a bit more to help strengthen things and avoid learning in mistakes. At the end of the warm-up session, Trevor announced that some of us were “absolved” from using long Bb in our studies, and that I was one of them. To be honest, I almost fell of my chair!

Studies, however, didn’t go as well as I wanted. For some reason a combination of being really cold and some funny nerves made me jittery, and I made silly mistakes. Andersen No. 9 (including the double-tonguing variation) were quite good, but my selection of Moyse studies earned quite a lot of criticism. Altès No. 10 just felt uncomfortable, as I hadn’t learned the accompanying part well enough, and my 50 Variations No. 5 was not in the correct rhythm. However, when I later mentioned to Trevor that I’d been feeling a bit off colour, he looked surprised and replied with “oh, I thought you did quite well today”. I must keep focusing on the learning process rather than the day-to-day.

This evening’s short concert for the village Gardeners Society Christmas party went pretty well. We played three sextet pieces, Alyssa and Roya did The Emperor and the Bird of Paradise for flute and spoken voice, and I played Ulpirra by Ross Edwards. I’m not totally sure what the audience made of my final performance direction to ‘stamp and shout’, but they seemed to enjoy the concert overall, and Trevor was pleased. As an ensemble, we played well together considering it was our first concert, though the different acoustic of the hall made a few people a little nervous. I need to remember to compensate a little more for a cold piccolo!

Our flute history papers are finally submitted and the cheese, biscuits and two glasses of wine at the gardeners’ party was a nice reward.

Day 53 – November 22nd – Bigger picture

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Today I achieved a somewhat strange feeling of contentment. It struck me that I’ve been spending quite a bit of time in recent weeks frustrated with this or that element of the course (isolation, Trevor being overbearing, social tensions). However, all the musical friends I’ve chatted with via Skype or email all express their jealousy that I’ve got this time here to just focus on flute and not worry about all the other things that life throws at us. Though everyone seemed to be keeping to themselves for the day, I embraced all the time I had, got a lot done, and throughly enjoyed it!

I noticed a small improvement on the Reichert from yesterday, and tried to take pleasure in it rather than dwelling overly much on what still needs work. A friend suggested I try some flute-free visualisation with the exercises, so I spent a bit of time on that as well.

In the afternoon, I spent some time comparing a cylindrical and conical bore piccolo (from the list of instruments we have to borrow out), as well as learning the Fantasia No. 6 in D minor by Telemann on traverso. The slow movement is coming along quite well, though I’m still not totally on top of notes like Bb, C and G# in both octaves. The D natural is very sharp on this instrument, and I’m having to adjust a lot of notes to get them in tune. As for the fast movement…I’ll get there! It’s great fun playing the traverso though, and I’m already wondering how I might be able to get my hands on one in the future.

I also spent a few hours finishing off an application for Sydney-based Ensemble Offspring’s 2015 ‘Hatched’ program – a year-long mentorship for composers and performers interested in new music. I have no idea whether I’ll get in, but am trying to use this time to apply for a whole lot of opportunities next year. I hope that at some point, either by getting into something or getting a job, I’ll have a clearer idea of which side of the world I want to be on come April! This sort of program would be ideal, as it would give me some structure and guidance while I go about my own thing (hopefully) working and playing.