Goodbye Junior Year!!
Hello everyone, it has been a couple months since my last update and naturally I have a lot to tell you all about. So here we go...
My Recital:
My recital was about 4 weeks ago and it was very successful. I felt very prepared and ready and after the first piece was done, my nerves were calmed and I realized that it was finally fun to do. I got a great review from my teacher who was quite impressed with my work which was also really nice. But the best thing of all was all the family and people that came to support me. I had a huge amount of family come see me, a lot of friends from school, my old teacher from back home even Mrs. Woods from FHS!!! I felt truly blessed to have so many people take time out of their busy days to see me. I just listened to the recording a few days ago. It was indeed a good recital but at the same time I feel like it needs to be better. I am approaching my final year and I need to be better, careful and stricter with myself next year, but this performance was still something to be proud of (which I am).
Music Ed Program:
In my previous entry I mentioned this 5 year Music-Ed program that I was going to apply for. I applied and took the interview. I met with the chair of the department and some of the other professors. The interview went ok until I was given a piece of music with a vocal score and some percussion lines. She asked me how would I teach this song to a class full of 4th graders. I gave a bunch of answers and all of them were met with "they're 4th graders, they won't know that". I was literally all out of answers. Finally she said, just say the words and then have them repeat after you. It was that simple and I was like ........oh, right... So yeah but long story short, I did not get accepted to the program. It was a bit of a bummer but I thought about it and was relieved that the decision was that decisive for me. I was dreading getting an acceptance letter because I would have had to make this huge life changing decision that I really didn't feel like making. I believe that God has plans for all of our lives and this rejection is indeed a product of that. God wants me to be a performer!!
Grad School Plans:
Because I'm not pursuing a Music Ed degree, any longer I will now be planning for graduate school which is very exciting but very stressful at the same time. I got a list of schools from my teacher to check out, so let me reveal to you where I could possibly be going in two years,
Peabody Conservatory (Baltimore)
Indiana University (....self explanitory)
Cleveland Institute of Music
Yale University (New Haven,I think?)
Rice University (Houston)
For those of you who are unfamiliar these schools are all killers!! Especially Yale because if by some crazy twist of fate you get accepted, they give you full tuition. But again, it is just a list and I will probably shorten it down or find some other schools that would be good to apply for. I am also going to apply for two orchestral training programs which are like internships. One is called Chicago Civic Orchestra and the other is New World Symphony based in Miami Beach. What I like about these programs is that they are incredible experiences, great things to have on your resume and they are paid!! So when I said I need to be better and stricter with myself, this is why. Moving on...
End of the Year Details:
As of now I am officially done with the exception of a recital I have to play in Saturday night. My finals were pretty easy. I had no tests, just a fugue project for Form and Anaylsis 2 which was hard, a journal for String Pedagogy, a edited portfolio of my writings for my liberal arts elective course, Into the Wild and finally a 4-5 page paper for my Modernism class. Then I had my performance jury last weekend. In all my past juries since Freshman year I have gotten either an 89 or a 90 and this jury I finally got a 91!!!! The panel offered some good points for me and some frankly irritating points but it was still my best jury so far. Right now I am just hanging out and trying to sublet my apartment for the summer. Hopefully it will be set by tomorrow because I have a number of people interested in seeing the place coming by. I am also moving out of my apartment to Brookline which is down on the C line. I will be living with a friend who graduated from Boco last year. The place is so big and $130 less than what I am paying now. I literally do not know what I am going to do with all the space that I will have...it's very exciting! Finally, on the 8th I return home to Franklin.
Summer Plans:
So what are my summer plans you ask? Well I will be attending a viola seminar in Salem New York. The seminar is run by two viola professors at my school, Lila Brown and Lenny Matczynski. It will be the first week in June and I am going with a bunch of friends from school which is gonna be super awesome. Other than that I will be returning to Bobs for work, going on vacation to Maine with the family, practicing my brains out and the usual summer shenanigans with y'all. My Dad got a fire pit for his Super Bowl party a while back (wink wink...) Well, that is a whole update of the past 5ish weeks of my life. For those of you who read all this mush I tip my hat to you. Farewell everyone, I will be home soon!
-Steve
My Recital:
My recital was about 4 weeks ago and it was very successful. I felt very prepared and ready and after the first piece was done, my nerves were calmed and I realized that it was finally fun to do. I got a great review from my teacher who was quite impressed with my work which was also really nice. But the best thing of all was all the family and people that came to support me. I had a huge amount of family come see me, a lot of friends from school, my old teacher from back home even Mrs. Woods from FHS!!! I felt truly blessed to have so many people take time out of their busy days to see me. I just listened to the recording a few days ago. It was indeed a good recital but at the same time I feel like it needs to be better. I am approaching my final year and I need to be better, careful and stricter with myself next year, but this performance was still something to be proud of (which I am).
Music Ed Program:
In my previous entry I mentioned this 5 year Music-Ed program that I was going to apply for. I applied and took the interview. I met with the chair of the department and some of the other professors. The interview went ok until I was given a piece of music with a vocal score and some percussion lines. She asked me how would I teach this song to a class full of 4th graders. I gave a bunch of answers and all of them were met with "they're 4th graders, they won't know that". I was literally all out of answers. Finally she said, just say the words and then have them repeat after you. It was that simple and I was like ........oh, right... So yeah but long story short, I did not get accepted to the program. It was a bit of a bummer but I thought about it and was relieved that the decision was that decisive for me. I was dreading getting an acceptance letter because I would have had to make this huge life changing decision that I really didn't feel like making. I believe that God has plans for all of our lives and this rejection is indeed a product of that. God wants me to be a performer!!
Grad School Plans:
Because I'm not pursuing a Music Ed degree, any longer I will now be planning for graduate school which is very exciting but very stressful at the same time. I got a list of schools from my teacher to check out, so let me reveal to you where I could possibly be going in two years,
Peabody Conservatory (Baltimore)
Indiana University (....self explanitory)
Cleveland Institute of Music
Yale University (New Haven,I think?)
Rice University (Houston)
For those of you who are unfamiliar these schools are all killers!! Especially Yale because if by some crazy twist of fate you get accepted, they give you full tuition. But again, it is just a list and I will probably shorten it down or find some other schools that would be good to apply for. I am also going to apply for two orchestral training programs which are like internships. One is called Chicago Civic Orchestra and the other is New World Symphony based in Miami Beach. What I like about these programs is that they are incredible experiences, great things to have on your resume and they are paid!! So when I said I need to be better and stricter with myself, this is why. Moving on...
End of the Year Details:
As of now I am officially done with the exception of a recital I have to play in Saturday night. My finals were pretty easy. I had no tests, just a fugue project for Form and Anaylsis 2 which was hard, a journal for String Pedagogy, a edited portfolio of my writings for my liberal arts elective course, Into the Wild and finally a 4-5 page paper for my Modernism class. Then I had my performance jury last weekend. In all my past juries since Freshman year I have gotten either an 89 or a 90 and this jury I finally got a 91!!!! The panel offered some good points for me and some frankly irritating points but it was still my best jury so far. Right now I am just hanging out and trying to sublet my apartment for the summer. Hopefully it will be set by tomorrow because I have a number of people interested in seeing the place coming by. I am also moving out of my apartment to Brookline which is down on the C line. I will be living with a friend who graduated from Boco last year. The place is so big and $130 less than what I am paying now. I literally do not know what I am going to do with all the space that I will have...it's very exciting! Finally, on the 8th I return home to Franklin.
Summer Plans:
So what are my summer plans you ask? Well I will be attending a viola seminar in Salem New York. The seminar is run by two viola professors at my school, Lila Brown and Lenny Matczynski. It will be the first week in June and I am going with a bunch of friends from school which is gonna be super awesome. Other than that I will be returning to Bobs for work, going on vacation to Maine with the family, practicing my brains out and the usual summer shenanigans with y'all. My Dad got a fire pit for his Super Bowl party a while back (wink wink...) Well, that is a whole update of the past 5ish weeks of my life. For those of you who read all this mush I tip my hat to you. Farewell everyone, I will be home soon!
-Steve