(no subject)
Roughly thirty seconds before I entered the room to do my piano jury, a random woman [prof of some sort, I'd assume] noticed me waiting and told me how awesome it was that I was able to perform for Gil Kalish. I had no idea who he was. It turns out that he's the head piano professor here...and has three Grammy nominations and a mess of awards and honors to his name. I guess it's good that I didn't know? Less pressure, in any event.
Juries - piano juries, at least - are quite a bit different than juries at Syracuse. To start out with, it's casual dress. The guy two spots before me was wearing jeans, and the girl right before me was wearing straight up hooker wear [tiny leopard print cardigan, stomach-exposing tank top, skinny jeans tucked into three-inch heeled hooker boots, and roughly three and a half pounds of makeup. Played really well, though]. I guess there's no "appearance" scoring, like at Cuse.
Also, you're judged by Kalish and your teacher [Kayin, a pretty awesome DMA student]...and then every single other piano TA watches you perform. There were about a dozen people in the room. He stopped me halfway through the Mozart, which was kind of annoying, as I spent SO DAMN MUCH time working on the second half. Oh, well. I think I did pretty good, though as usual I wasn't happy with the Chopin.
For your unneeded information, I played the first movement of Mozart's Sonata in GM, k283 [see an 11 year old girl schooling me here, taking it about 20 clicks faster than I played it] and Chopin's Prelude no. 7 in AM [heard better than I can play it here].
So...yeah! Life! My computer had a small meltdown and died. I had to give my baby to the Apple Store, who sent it out and got it back in pretty much record time. [Being without a computer for a full week during finals still fucking sucked, however.] They ended up replacing the logic board, the screen, and the display housing. The only thing they actually needed to replace was the logic board, but I'm really thankful about the others. My screen is a whole lot clearer, and it doesn't have those weird light streaks any more. And the new screen housing is dent-free! Thank GOD for AppleCare. If I didn't have it, this would have cost hundreds of dollars that I really don't have. [Just paid $7000 in tuition and housing for the semester, yay! And by 'yay' I mean kill me now.]
Finals are...happening slowly. I have about half to two-thirds of my work for Harmony class done. Thank god, she got rid of a lot of the stuff she added on. Poor Celeste told me that she totally wouldn't have been able to do all of it, and that Sheila told her she might have to take the class over. Poor woman, she's so sweet. I was honest but not mean [and I could have been MEAN] in my evaluation for the class. Michael, Michael, Winston and I got coffee after class and we spent pretty much the whole time bitching about it. I am really not looking forward to taking Tonal Analysis with her next semester. Stephen told me passing out of it is really easy...I should ask Martha or Sally about taking the test.
Ear training is done, except for madrigal-singing tomorrow. I sang badly on the final [oddly enough, I tend to sing prepared stuff decently, albeit with shaky syllables fuck-you-movable-do-training] which pissed me off, but I think I did decent on the exit exam.
I presented my abstract for the proseminar final paper yesterday, and Mauro really seemed to like it. Death of classical music = a fun time for everyone. I realized something, though. My abstract was 550 words [I ran over the 500 word limit, of course], and I briefly sketched out my paper with little introduction or conclusion. The paper is only 3000-4000 words. The abstract, in length, is therefore almost 15-20% of the paper. I am going to run SO FAR OVER the word limit, it's not even funny. I'm going to be happy if I can keep it to 20 pages. There's just so damn much information, it's crazy. Eh, whatever. It's not like Mauro has given us ANY GRADES so far. I love the man, but he's kind of killing me here.
Ethno is my big worry. I'm just not experienced in it, and I don't know if there's enough info for the paper. I have all the info there is on sega, and I'm going to track down everything I can on taarab tomorrow. Maybe I should add in the sidi music, like Andy recommended. Grrr. i just don't know.
Well, tonight I'm doing nothing. Tomorrow I'm working my ass off before the apartment's last-hurrah Papa John's night. Saturday is fun day with Richie, then Sunday on I work my tukhus off. I can do this, I can do this.
I need to go book plane tickets. Whoo!
Juries - piano juries, at least - are quite a bit different than juries at Syracuse. To start out with, it's casual dress. The guy two spots before me was wearing jeans, and the girl right before me was wearing straight up hooker wear [tiny leopard print cardigan, stomach-exposing tank top, skinny jeans tucked into three-inch heeled hooker boots, and roughly three and a half pounds of makeup. Played really well, though]. I guess there's no "appearance" scoring, like at Cuse.
Also, you're judged by Kalish and your teacher [Kayin, a pretty awesome DMA student]...and then every single other piano TA watches you perform. There were about a dozen people in the room. He stopped me halfway through the Mozart, which was kind of annoying, as I spent SO DAMN MUCH time working on the second half. Oh, well. I think I did pretty good, though as usual I wasn't happy with the Chopin.
For your unneeded information, I played the first movement of Mozart's Sonata in GM, k283 [see an 11 year old girl schooling me here, taking it about 20 clicks faster than I played it] and Chopin's Prelude no. 7 in AM [heard better than I can play it here].
So...yeah! Life! My computer had a small meltdown and died. I had to give my baby to the Apple Store, who sent it out and got it back in pretty much record time. [Being without a computer for a full week during finals still fucking sucked, however.] They ended up replacing the logic board, the screen, and the display housing. The only thing they actually needed to replace was the logic board, but I'm really thankful about the others. My screen is a whole lot clearer, and it doesn't have those weird light streaks any more. And the new screen housing is dent-free! Thank GOD for AppleCare. If I didn't have it, this would have cost hundreds of dollars that I really don't have. [Just paid $7000 in tuition and housing for the semester, yay! And by 'yay' I mean kill me now.]
Finals are...happening slowly. I have about half to two-thirds of my work for Harmony class done. Thank god, she got rid of a lot of the stuff she added on. Poor Celeste told me that she totally wouldn't have been able to do all of it, and that Sheila told her she might have to take the class over. Poor woman, she's so sweet. I was honest but not mean [and I could have been MEAN] in my evaluation for the class. Michael, Michael, Winston and I got coffee after class and we spent pretty much the whole time bitching about it. I am really not looking forward to taking Tonal Analysis with her next semester. Stephen told me passing out of it is really easy...I should ask Martha or Sally about taking the test.
Ear training is done, except for madrigal-singing tomorrow. I sang badly on the final [oddly enough, I tend to sing prepared stuff decently, albeit with shaky syllables fuck-you-movable-do-training] which pissed me off, but I think I did decent on the exit exam.
I presented my abstract for the proseminar final paper yesterday, and Mauro really seemed to like it. Death of classical music = a fun time for everyone. I realized something, though. My abstract was 550 words [I ran over the 500 word limit, of course], and I briefly sketched out my paper with little introduction or conclusion. The paper is only 3000-4000 words. The abstract, in length, is therefore almost 15-20% of the paper. I am going to run SO FAR OVER the word limit, it's not even funny. I'm going to be happy if I can keep it to 20 pages. There's just so damn much information, it's crazy. Eh, whatever. It's not like Mauro has given us ANY GRADES so far. I love the man, but he's kind of killing me here.
Ethno is my big worry. I'm just not experienced in it, and I don't know if there's enough info for the paper. I have all the info there is on sega, and I'm going to track down everything I can on taarab tomorrow. Maybe I should add in the sidi music, like Andy recommended. Grrr. i just don't know.
Well, tonight I'm doing nothing. Tomorrow I'm working my ass off before the apartment's last-hurrah Papa John's night. Saturday is fun day with Richie, then Sunday on I work my tukhus off. I can do this, I can do this.
I need to go book plane tickets. Whoo!