For Your Listening Pleasure

So not much is happening, just wrapping up all my loose ends and attempting to pack for my exodus to Toronto on Wednesday. But I thought I'd post a few things so that you guys can hear what I've been up to this year! First is from the finale of the National Viola Competition in February - the piece by Max Knigge for viola soloist and orchestra of violas! The Dutch radio recorded it, and it's available to stream on their website here. Then there's the recording I made of my exam. It's not great quality - I just set up my laptop and the back of the hall and pressed 'record', so the levels aren't great, but it gives you a gist of what I sound like when I play these days. I've uploaded the files here, and you can download and unzip the file to play it. It's in mp4 format, which is like mp3 but not. I'm not sure. That's just what format my computer put them into. And if you want to listen to the recital in order, it's Hindemith-Enescu-Ryan-Rontgen! And last but not least is the recording from Alex Simu's end exam, where I participated by playing in the Modern Baltic Jazz Orchestra. All the pieces except one were written and arranged by Alex, and he plays solo sax/clarinet on all of them. It's Baltic jazz because he's Romanian and you can hear Romanian folk influences in some of the songs, and the one piece that wasn't written by him was written by his friend Bobby who's from Bulgaria! Representin. So you can find that here. Same deal - download, unzip, enjoy!

What!!!!!

So according to my mother I should stop playing Mafia Wars on Facebook and post on my blog already! So here we go. I haven't really been doing a lot since my exam. I played in the New Baltic Jazz Orchestra for a jazz sax final exam. We played music that was all composed and arranged by the saxophonist, save one piece that was written by his friend the drummer. So that was pretty cool. Then on Sunday I played in the Klank Kleur festival, playing in the orchestra for the final concert of the festival. On Wednesday I'm playing in a pop music final exam at the Beurs von Berlage called "Unsettled Scores". They've even made a website for it - unsettledscores.com. Scroll down and check out the movie trailer they made for it. I'm not totally sure how Johnny Depp fits into it, but I'm sure all will be explained. Then I'm just partying until my return to the motherland on the 24th. And if by partying you mean sleeping, eating, reading, and watching TV. That's my routine these days. I would be doing fun stuff outdoors, but the weather's been really craptastic. Beautiful Dutch summer. There was about 5 days of nice summer weather, but it was the week before my exam and I missed it! I learned my lesson for next year though - if it's nice out, screw practice! Enjoy it while it lasts......

The end of real life!

Ahaha! I'm now back to non-scheduled programming, seeing as how my exam was last night and I passed. So now I don't have anything to work on. Technically. I have a few concerts to rehearse for, but the holidays have begun. To celebrate this, I slept until 1 pm today. I know how to party. But there isn't too much to relate about what I've been doing since I got back from London. Just practicing and trying to stay out of trouble :) My exam went quite well, aside from slight wrong note issues in my Hindemith solo sonata, I feel good about the rest of the pieces. I recorded it on my laptop, and recordings are available upon request! I will of course have to send it to my mother, because she loves to listen to me. Y'know, so she can hear how her investment is doing. My dad says I'm her hobby, but I see it more as an investment. In me. But anyways, I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing with myself for the three weeks until I go to Toronto. I'm idly thinking about going to Belgium, mostly because it's the cheapest place to get to that's not in the Netherlands. But we shall see. Over and out.