Fendika

Two awesome concerts in two awesome days! Despite the drizzly Boston weather and the nights getting colder, the welcoming warmth of concert halls have been my refuge. On Tuesday night, I made my way over to the New England Conservatory to see the wind ensemble play in Jordan Hall. I spent four years completing my Bachelor's degree at this amazing place, and sitting in the ever so familiar Jordan Hall felt almost like being at a second home. 

I can't say in words how thankful I feel, for having played countless concerts in this hall. The concert was great, the famous composer/conductor/horn player/musician/savior of NEC was conducting that night: Gunther Schuller, with the New England Conservatory wind ensemble that my boyfriend was playing in as a ringer. After the concert, we took part in that old NEC post-concert tradition of getting a few brews at the UNO's next door. It was wonderful, got to see a lot of my most favorite musician friends. And yes, the New England Conservatory is an historic building/landmark. 

Today was a drizzly, gray, cloudy, miserable day, but like I said...the light radiating from the classrooms, concert halls, and practice rooms were a welcome and warm sight. The day started off with my Mozart class...we talked about Mozart's symphonies and stuff. Here's a good one to listen to:

Class was cut by an hour, because our professor took us to a concert! But unlike what you would expect from a class of Mozart scholars, the concert was nowhere even close to classical music. It was an Ethiopian azmari music and dance troupe! They performed all sorts of traditional folkloric, and popular music from Ethiopia. See, Boston is a rich cultural city, and BU had a great lunchtime world music concert series. It was great, and definitely the last thing I expected to do when I woke up this morning. 

The Fendika music and dance troupe. Incredible. 

Then I had lunch and orchestra rehearsal (La Traviata is sounding really good...) had a lovely pumpkin spice latte while reading in Starbucks watching the rain fall, and finished the day up by practicing for two and a half hours. As you can see:

The good news? I practiced for two hours and my cadenza in the Makris is sounding really badass. 

The bad news? I didn't get through half the stuff on the stand. 

The annoying news? I have to eventually play Capriccio Espagnol for an audition. (Kind of a clarinet thing)

There's always tomorrow.