So I spent the last three days watching the (piano) finals of the 13th International Tchaikovsky Competition, and being reasonably worried that the jury's results will not comply with my results.  Chiefly because I am electing, as a winner, Captain Jack Sparrow.  No one in their right mind would crown Jack Sparrow the winner, after all; he'd take ( Read more... )

(More on DVDs from China.)

Is it just me, or do winners of the International Frederick Chopin Competition tend to be dashingly attractive members of our society? Maurizio Pollini, Martha Argerich... Ivo Pogorelich, not a winner, but who became famous after it... Yundi Li (well, he has lots of fangirls, anyway, and I sure find his hands attractive ( Read more... )

Wow. I randomly listened to an mp3 on the computer that turned out to be Glenn Gould performing Bach's The Art of the Fugue - Contrapunctus I. Dude. It's been a while since Bach moved me so much. T_T ( Read more... )

Yay, I slacked piano-wise last week (bleeping midterms) and now I'm all motivated again. My étude shows improvement (moved from "lamentable" to "border-line acceptable"). I'm also jolly because I got an A- for my Chrysathemums essay, graded by my favourite teacher EVAR.

And the girls came to visit! I stupidly missed tantatanta last time, but that shall be ( Read more... )

I'm going to post about the OSM concert, which was... interesting, as soon as I have something resembling free time ( Read more... )

Music-wise, I had a pretty bad day yesterday. I must've totally alienated poor Jonathan Schirmer during practice (I only realized that I had been apologizing every 5 seconds when he gave me a strange look and said, "It's OK..."). At least he is my partner in being tired all the time and depressed over the Debussy (our third movement is so horrible ( Read more... )

I played my Ballade to guests yesterday and it is in such a lamentable state. Listed among the things that I hate the MOST in the world is surely: understanding a piece almost perfectly, then not practising it for a few weeks and losing Enlightenment.

Grrrrrrrr.

I spent a full hour going through ONE page of Bach today, and then I uncomfortably fell asleep for about 3 minutes listening to Pink Floyd, which doesn't help my mood at all (note for further use). I started tabbing the bass to Take Me Out thinking it was a guitar, then I tabbed the guitars' intro, and that took about 5 minutes. (I would so like to ( Read more... )

I'll wait until I have oodles of time in front of me before blogging properly about this trip. Right now I just want to surf the Internet.

Happy Canada Day, folks!

Wow, it's the summer holidays. (It's only now that I can feel it like the others do...)

Wonderful film-shooting day on Friday with a most serviable Mathieu and interesting Saturday at Marianopolis. There are a total of 3 people from my high school who are taking the same program as I am - more precisely, a perpetually sleepy Korean girl, a Hachiko-style Chinese girl (dress, not personality), and a self-important Ukrainian part-time ( Read more... )