Day 7: Hard Rock!

Oh man.

 

I would be lying if I said Day 7 was not a grumpy day for me. Had my orchestral audition in the early morning. It was okay, I guess.

Things started off well with the Mozart concerto, until the stand

started

sinking

and sinking

and sinking

Until I was forced to back up just to see the music by my knees.

 

This WOULD have been fine – I’m an old hand at dealing with the unexpected in performance situations, the music was visible, not ideal, but visible – except one of the lovely flutists on the audition panel decided to jump up and pull the stand up. Not one but about 3 times.

Regardless of where it is, at my ankles or in the sky, stationary music is ALWAYS easier to read than music that looks like its on the elevator of the busiest hotel in London.

Anyway. Survived that with little damage, they gave me a new stand. Beethoven did not have much luck either because down the stand went.

I took my excertps out of the binder; still, the stand fell down.

Finally we found a stand that would stay up and I was able to continue on with the audition with little interruption. I had to play Beethoven 5 and Stravinsky Pulcinella (which I took too slow – d’oh!), Dvorak Number 8 and Shostakovich 9 on Piccolo.

If I had to critique my own audition, without taking into consideration any of the comments or happenings during it, I woul have said I played well.

Definitely took Pulcinella too slow and played a wrong note in Beethoven, but everything else was clean and tidy and tempi should have been fine.

Unfortunately they (apparently) play everything faster here in the UK, so instead of 126, they wanted to hear my Dvorak at 142.

I know – I went out to my metronome right after the audition and tapped it to find out. So much for listening to recordings and following the instructions in the score!

 

C’est la vie. Thats the thing about music. Its all subjective and you are constantly putting yourself out there for someone else to judge you.

 

Over the course of the afternoon I practiced for a little bit and puttered around the Gloucester Road station area. Mom & Dad did the Big Bus tour that day and saw many of the sights of London. When they got back to the hotel, we chilled for a little before hopping on the Tube and going to the Hard Rock Cafe for Dad’s birthday.

Despite Mom and Dad having scoped it out earlier in the day, we still got mega lost coming out of the Tube station. Took us every bit of 45 minutes to find the restaurant, and then we had to wait a half hour or more to get a table!

What do you do when waiting to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe? Go to the Hard Rock Store of course!

The HRC in London is the original one, so they also have a “Vault” with cool paraphernalia in it that no other HRC location has. Here are some of the things we found:

 

So there you go.

No need to visit the Vault at the Hard Rock Cafe London now because you’ve seen JUST about everything in it. Do I even need to mention that it was my father who took all the pictures? Probably not. He comandeered my camera. Happens every time he forgets his own, and that man takes a LOT of pictures.

 

In the end, our meal at HRC was delicious, if a bit loud. We got home late-ish and went straight to bed: Day 8 was going to bring a new bank account and, if I was lucky, a UK mobile phone!

 

Cheers!

I <3 Rain

The other day it was raining like crazy here.

(Surprised? You shouldn’t be)

 

While I was out, several times in fact, I had seen a few people with these clear umbrellas that said “I ❤ Rain” on them. I thought it was a cute, optimistic way to be out and about in the weather, so decided I would pick one up some time.

Turns out, the little convenience stores by my bus stop both sell them.

 

I went down to get a starbucks tea (more on my starbucks adventures later) and on my way back to the bus stop, stopped at the first shop to get an umbrella. I texted my friend I.F. to tell him how I was so excited for my “I ❤  Rain” umbrella …

 

Only to find, when I got off the bus and opened it up, that the foolish  thing says “I ❤ London” instead.

 

I guess its still true, and as I.F. pointed out, London and Rain are pretty much synonyms anyway so what difference does it make?!

 

Still

 

 

“I ❤ Rain” is so much cuter.

Day 6- Registration for school!

Monday, September 10th 2012- Registration for my Artist Diploma at the Royal College of Music!

Previous (and somewhat thereafter) this particular day, I had no idea what my course load was going to be like. I DID know that I would have three teachers. I am studying piccolo with Stewart McIlwham (principal teacher) and additionally with Kathleen Stevenson, but also doing a few hours of flute with Susan Milan.

Aside from that, I had no idea how this year was going to pan out.

The registration process was interesting: everyone in the various postgraduate (M.Mus Comp, M. Screen Comp, M. Perf, M. Perf Sci, Grad Dip and Art Dip) programs had  to que up (thats UK for “line up”, if you didnt already know) in the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall – sans seating to make room for everyone of course!… you’ll hear more about this amazing space at a later date I am sure – and slowly make their way through the various stations.

First stop was to check in and pick up my paperwork from the lovely David Haphram, head of registry and someone with whom I have had a whole lot of contact with through the application and visa application process! He is an absolute doll and actually was good company for my parents while they watched me go through registration.

Once we filled out our remaining paperwork and the girls at finance confirmed that we had paid at least 1/3rd of our whopping tuition/housing bill, we moved on to the que for private study details. All the students get the phone numbers of our private teachers, and it is then up to us to make contact and set up the first lessons.

I have to say… these 10/12 digit phone numbers always keep me on my toes. I can barely seem to remember my own, let alone anyone elses!

Anyway, after collecting phone numbers there were a few stations with miscellaneous things (like signing up for my alexander technique lessons, and adding my name to forms for run club and such things!) before we got to the IT station where we registered our accounts and got our email addresses.

I love university email addresses. They’re so nerdy – especially the ones for RCM which are “firstname.lastname@rcm.ac.uk”. Certainly better than the random computer generated ones from my previous schools, that are simply combinations of letters from my name, and random numbers!

The second last stage of registration was getting my student card. These things are like magic. Theres no swipe strip or computer chip, but hold it up to an asimut computer (more on that later) or RCM photocopier and all of a sudden you are logged in to the digital world of the school. Amazing.

Finally, we had to go to the photocopying station to learn how to use the school’s machines. Its pretty neat actually. If you send a document to print from a school computer, it goes through a “follow me” app type thing – you just go to any printer that belongs to RCM (including the one home here at Halls) and swipe your card. The machine will show you ALL of the documents you have qued in the last 4 or 5  days!

Petty neat- just too bad we can’t hook our own computers up to the system!

 

After registration was over, I went to a meeting for the woodwind faculty (there are 94 of us – flutes oboes clarinets bassoons saxophones and recorders!) where I met some lovely flutists from Boston (you can follow Ted’s blog: http://tedinlondon.blogspot.com) who are here on exchange. They have definitely become some of my best friends over the past few weeks. Nothing like a good American to make you feel at home!

I also attended a postgrad meet & greet, where a bunch of us shared some pints (of course!) and I met some more folks from all over the world!

I still, to this day – October 3 2012 – have yet to meet someone else in the Artist Diploma program. 😦

The evening saw us head home to Halls where I practiced for an hour before we headed back down town. On the way walking to the bus poor old Mom slipped on a piece of plastic or something, and went down hard on the side walk! She bumped her wrist but was okay!

For anyone keeping track – thats 2 wipe outs/ accidents in 6 days! I was just hoping I wasnt next…….

Supper wasnt too exciting on Day 6. We opted for American fast food and had Burger King & KFC. Pretty good, I have to say!

 

My audition for orchestra was the next morning, so I didnt want to be up late or anything. Had a very early rise to get to school and get ready to play.

 

Cheers!

The BIG MIX

Sunday, September 30^th

I can’t believe it is the last day of September already. This means only 71 days till I head back home to my beautiful rock in the middle of the ocean, and even far less time to the multiple performance deadlines coming up over the course of the semester.

Today was a super enjoyable day, although quite long and by the end of it I was exhausted. My friend HS and I had purchased some tickets to a fundraising event called “The Big Mix” (www.thebigmnix.org.uk) which supports the Macmillan Cancer Support fund. MacMillan provides all kinds of services to cancer patients and their families here in London (maybe across the UK, I’m not sure) so it was a cause we were both happy to support. Our £7.50 earned us access to three venues: RichMix (where we saw the open mic/slam poetry event last week), Concrete (an underground industrial style venue – the name doesn’t lie) and The Brick House (insert Lionel Richie musical quote here). Each of the venues were hosting different types of events. Our first stop was at RichMix, which had all of the live music.

The first group we saw was Cable Street Collective (www.soundcloud.com/cablestreetcollective). They had a very unique sound, sometimes reminiscent of Paul Simon, with hints of African and Calypso style beats. I liked their peppy, pink-haired female vocalist, and they had tight harmonies which both HS and I could appreciate.

After Cable Street Collective there was a group called Yossarian, an interesting band that described their sound as “existential rock”. I was very into the instrumentals, but the vocalist had a deep voice that was hard to understand. Perhaps the sound system wasn’t helping but I think the timbres just werent mixing well!

After that came on what was set out to be a “synth duo” called The Penelopes. Four of them came on stage.

Either someone looked up the wrong definition of “Duo” or they have added a few extra folks for live performances/or since the program was printed. They were indeed a synth pop type of ensemble, however I really couldn’t get into the vocals (at least the male singer) of this group either. Their instrumental music, on the other hand, was awesome.

We stayed at RichMix for a few tunes by the next act, Alessi’s Ark (a solo accoustic girl, who was an interesting follow up to the Penelopes? Not sure who planned that one) before heading over to the Brick House. The Brick House was hosting an array of events but we stopped in especially to see some of the Cabaret/ Burlesque show.

I thought it was good but I have to admit I wasn’t blown away. The most highly entertaining act we saw was the someone-or-other “Bliss” who was the Canadian girl. She came out in red sparkley undies and a hockey jersey (also bedazzled and glittering) with a miniature hockey stick and a stuffed toy seal.

She was introduced as dancing to the Canadian Anthem – what song came on? Let me give you a clue:

Oh baaaby baaby baaaaaaaaby OH! Its like baby baby baby OH!

 

You got it.

A little Justin Bieber.

After that she danced to Bryan Adams (A Night to Remember) and Celine Dion (My Heart Will Go On) which I found middle awkward because they are such slow tunes!

Turns out the cute little seals head came off and he turned into a head and a body attached by a red sequined scarf…. It was all a joke on the “clubbing baby seals” issue of course.

Her routine ended with swinging nipple tassles during Celine Dion.

We left as soon as she was off the stage.

 

(These last two thoughts may or may not be related)

 

A quick stop at Concrete left us in stitches. We saw a few comics, including the end of Tom Deacon’s set, a hilarious stand-up comedian, Joel Dommett who is also on MTV over here, and finally a sketch comedy group called WitTank.

Oh em gee.

WitTank was BEYOND hilarious – even if the humor was a little crude.

After the comedy we headed back to RichMix to see the final music act, a young man by the name of Marques Toliver.

I will say nothing other then you should check out this link – he is a pretty awesome loop-artist/singer-songwriter type J

www.marquestoliver.com

The neatest thing about his set was that for the last song, he unplugged his violin, got off the stage and came down into the audience (which was somewhat small but VERY into the music) to do the tune acoustically. It was magical!

After Marques played, there was supposed to be an after party at the Brick House, so we headed in that direction but it turned out the Hip Hop Karaoke was still going on. We watched for a few songs and then decided to call it a night.

The ride home from the Shoreditch area is a bit of a drag, and I snoozed for the majority of the tube ride.

 

Typical, eh?

Back to school life tomorrow. I don’t really have a whole lot going on: just an Alexander Technique lesson that I can’t wait for (have quite the kink in my neck after sitting and looking up at stage platforms all day and night!) followed by the first wind sectional for Wind Orchestra. Our concert is next week! Tomorrow’s rehearsal will be focused on a piece called Triumph by Michael Tippett. Most of the music for this concert is relatively unknown – I’ll have to let you know how it goes.

Cheers!