A small detail I forgot…

In my “Welcome Back After Christmas Break” post, I forgot to mention one tiny detail from the end of Fall Semester that I forgot.

Sir James Galway came to RCM and gave a masterclass! I didnt get to play, but it was still a thrill to sit in the audience and listen to him talk & teach! He is every bit as brilliant as others have said.

The best part about the whole thing was however, that in his black-shirt-with-pink-pinstripes-and-white-cuffs-and-collar, plastic square framed glasses, and camel brown coloured shoes, Sir Jimmy (who is not nearly as tall as one might expect) looked fairly identical to the old grandpa from UP.

NO JOKES.

I legitimately kid you not.

I.F. will back me on this, as he also attended the class.

Amazeballs.

xox

RCM Open Day & Masterclass with Gareth Davies

Around this time every year, the RCM hosts “Open Days” for each faculty. An Open Day is basically a regular day at College, with a few extras thrown in, so that prospective students (who’ve already been accepted to a course at College but maybe want to check it out to be sure, or need a little extra convincing that its the best place ever!) can see how everything works!

 

The woodwind faculty’s Open Day was yesterday, Friday January 25th 2013. Special events for our open day included an open Post Graduate Orchestral Repertoire class (featuring Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4, with yours truly on the piccolo – more on that later), performances by the Cataleya Woodwind Quintet and the first year saxophone quartet.

 

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(Cataleya Wind Quintet – my friends!)

 

Simon Channing, head of woodwinds, also organized an Orchestral Excerpt masterclass with Gareth Davies, principal flute of the London Symphony Orchestra. Simon emailed some of the postgrad flute players in the school and we all got to play for Gareth for about 30 minutes…..with just 2 days notice!

Apparently I was the only one who actually went out of my way to prepare something. Or maybe its more like I’m the only one that has to make a special effort to prepare excerpts, because (bad me) they’re not a part of my daily practice.

Anyway! I prepared some excerpts from Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade, on piccolo of course!

I have seen Gareth give a rep class before, and thought he was really great, so I was definitely looking forward to the class, and my fingers were crossed that I would have a good experience:

Last semester had several stressful situations for me, mostly concerned with performance anxiety. I played a few times and had a really hard time with my anxiety, to the point where my breathing was hard to control, my palms would be really sweaty and I would literally be shaking in my boots!

I had a few tough performances but after a really good Christmas break, and some positive changes with things at College, I came back to this semester feeling much better!

To my incredible delight, the class went REALLY great!

I didnt feel the anxious nerves at all – just excited nerves! I played just as well as everyone else who did, and Gareth had good things to say. He encouraged me not to play timidly just because I was in a small room with a dozen people sitting around. “Go ahead and break their ear drums!”.

Funnily enough, true to a dream I had had the night before, Gareth wanted me to play the excerpt with him (as it happens in the piece – the piccolo is in octaves with both flutes) to work on volume and tuning.

 

In the end it was heaps of fun (my one Aussie word – heaps – to celebrate Australia day!) and I was thrilled with how I played!

Yay for a great day!

 

The LAST part of “Open Day” at RCM is always a happy hour in the BaRCM.

We shared a few pints with friends from college, and new friends who might be studying next year. The only sad thing was that for me, I will never get to study with these guys, as I am graduating from RCM in just 5 short months – 4, if you dont count the month long break I have in March & April!

 

Speaking of … 55 my days till I head home again! So much to do between now and then!

 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend. I know there are MANY hours of practice on the books for my Sunday.

 

Cheers!

Welcome Back!

My apologies for not having posted in literally months. The last post would have been from October’s Sky Fall premiere, and let me tell you, a heck of a lot has happened since then.

During the end of last semester, I got really sick and was out of commission for about 2 and a half weeks. I did manage to get to school to play in Variable Geometry, the contemporary music project under the direction of Jean-Phillippe Calvin. We played some very interesting new music by some current and former RCM students. It was an exciting project and I am very much looking forward to playing with this group again later this semester.

At the end of the fall semester, I was pleased to be playing principal piccolo with the RCM Symphony Orchestra for a selection of works: Barbers Second Essay (absolutely to die for!), Strauss’ Salome’s Dance of the Seven Veils, and Belshazzar’s Feast (for choir and orchestra) by Walton. The conductor for this concert was the wonderful Martin Andre from the Portugal Opera and Symphony Orchestra.

 

I headed back to Canada on December 2nd and boy did I have an awesome break! I worked way too much (which is great cause I love my store and I made lots of money, but it also meant I was really busy and didnt get to see my friends or family as much as I could have), played a number of gigs and concerts with various people/ensembles, rode my horse a LOT (yay! We did a dressage clinic with Roz Moskovits that changed everything for us. So happy about that!) and practiced a bit 🙂

My five week vacation was not to last forever tho, so on January 5th I came back to London. Been here 11 days now, and basically havent stopped, until today.

Upon arriving in London, I hit the ground running.

Of my two projects for this semester (Variable Geometry being one), the first and most exciting one was playing principal piccolo with the RCM Philharmonic Orchestra.

We did a performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which also included a presentation on the ballet and the history of the work – there was a lot of drama involved so it was quite interesting! The orchestra even got to do their own workshop with a choreographer and learned some of the interesting dancing that took place in the original ballet!

The concert took place in Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall at college, on the first Thursday back at school. Thats right. the FIRST Thursday.

We started rehearsals on Monday afternoon, so had a grand total about 26 hours on the piece, and then rocked the heck out of it in concert on Thursday night.

 

To date I think this has been the most exciting performance during my time at Royal College.

 

Right now I am waiting for my teachers to get organized so we can start our lessons. Stewart is away with the LPO on tour playing in the Canary Islands, but I expect he comes back in the next few days, so I should be able to see him next week! I have a lesson with Kathleen this friday (whoops…better go back to the practice room and do more work on Scheherezade and Bartok!) and a lesson with Carla, my new contemporary-specialist flute teacher (so exciting!) next week.

Very much looking forward to this semester at RCM. My friends and I are planning a trip to Paris, and I am playing some really exciting music in preparation for my June recital.

 

For now, I’m off to get some lunch, mail some music back to Just Flutes for return, and then its back to the practice room. Work work work!

 

xox

 

PS: Prince Harry is supposed to be coming back from Afghanistan this month. Will let you know how that goes. x