Speaking of which, I have been far too busy to write this blog for over 2 weeks again! If you're wondering what the title has to do with this, here we go! I had a crazy Thursday where I was out of the house from 7.30am due to our Engaging Audiences assignment. As a group we had been creating a 40 minute concert for a class of school children to teach and inspire them about music and Thursday morning involved performing said "Engaging" concert 3 times between 9am and 12noon. As you can imagine, it was pretty hard work and I seriously admire primary school teachers! For many people, finishing at 12 meant they were done for the day at lunchtime, however I headed off straight to my placement working with the "Young at Heart" group. This week we were teaching them tempo and time signatures, attempting to use the power of dance to explain (I can't dance to save my life), as well as teaching them the Eidelweiss clapping game - YouTube it if you haven't seen it before - it can be very confusing! Finally after my placement I headed to Oxford Street for the launch night of the London wide CU mission week, which will take place in January. It was a lovely night meeting people from Christian Unions across London, listening to their experiences as Christians in the Capital's universities and singing God's praise! We also learnt about the ways to use "Uncover" - a book containing John's Gospel and 6 studies to help you understand it. I must say though, I was shattered by the time I got home at 10.30pm.
Friday was no easy day either as it was another early start, although it was equally fun. Camden music service has this amazing brass project running, with which I had the pleasure of helping out. Four classes of Year 5 and 6 pupils all learning brass instruments and playing pieces in harmony, true brass band style. I really take my hat off to the teachers and pupils alike and although I don't wish to pursue teaching as a full-time career, I definitely would love to be involved in one of these opportunities in the future! There are many articles about the benefits of music education (eg. https://www.facebook.com/BBCLookNorthYorkshire/videos/10153686480584626/ ) and it was evident in this school how keen and focused all the children were as they worked together to produce a brass band. Following such an exciting morning I went on a mission to get my trumpet serviced, but unfortunately the servicing guy had just gone home so I still haven't managed to get it done and Camden is a bit out of the way to travel regularly! Anyone got any suggestions for people who do brass services closer to South London? I'm having trouble with my valves becoming slow only a day after oiling them every time, and they get even worse in the cold...
On a positive note, my orchestral audition went well! At least I hope the panel thought so too. I'm pretty certain the fact they were behind a screen really helped as I wasn't particularly nervous compared to normal - it's strange how the psychological effects of a screen can vastly improve someone's trumpet playing. I was asked to play the opening of Mahler 5, Petrushka's Ballerina Dance and the beginning bit of Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture (transposing to Trumpet in Eb) and it was all over very fast after so much preparation. Funnily enough I quite enjoyed preparing those excerpts so I was lucky to have been asked the ones I like as I find it makes a difference to how you play something! One little tip I try to remember when playing Mahler 5 (although it has to be pretty loud) is *cue Yorkshire accent* "Never louder than lovely" as my brass teacher used to say. If you've never heard Mahler 5, that is my recommendation for you this week. I was supposed to see it live in concert on Sunday but I couldn't print my tickets, sad times :(
Random activity for this evening involved looking on EBay and every brass website possible at Eb/D trumpets as I would love to buy one... I promise I can justify it, there's more work and excerpts popping up which are just not playable on the Bb!
This post has taken me ages to write tonight for some reason, so the final exciting thing is that I'm venturing out into the world of new repertoire and have taken 2 new pieces out of the library to learn. The Hindemith Sonata - bog standard trumpet rep really, and Bozza's Frigariana. Both quite different to the style I usually play and quite a challenge but I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into them. Since I have failed miserably at images in this post, here's a picture of Felix Klieser, the no-armed French Horn player. He's amazing.
S x
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