Contemplating My Relaxation

I had my first (of probably, at least a few) New World Audition this week. And it was ok, actually. The solos were way better than I expected, and the excerpts a little dodgier than expected, but all around, a solid B experience. They were very nice, and I'm realizing that I don't totally suck at excerpts, even if the snarmy coach here acts like I do. I have a few goals for the next year, and one of them is gaining confidence in playing excerpts for auditions. It's so silly that I love playing music for people, even in an audition situation, but I freeze up and get all mechanical in excerpt time, because I feel like everyone is just waiting for you to fuck up. (And well, that's sort of true.) But, I think if I have a more supportive excerpt coach, I may be able to eliminated the negative psychological repercussions of this year's excerpting. Because it's silly that I'm so confident and expressive in regular music, but that I freeze and panic in excerpts, either because I've had such harsh coachings, or because I believe internally that I am just not good at them. It is time to arrest that notion and to move on!

In other words, I'm vacillating between relaxation and minor stress (nothing compared to the last few months, though) because I have to play a few (guess what?) excerpts in a master class today, and because our contemporary ensemble is performing a bitch-ass-hard contemporary piece, and I haven't been to many rehearsals, and I'm petrified. (Wolfgang Rihm=freaking scary German shit, with somewhere between 12-32 notes per bar. No good.) I'm also really looking forward to my recital, once I get everything learned! I just have to finish off the Bach and learn the whole Shostakovich, which should definitely be doable, based on how long it normally takes me to learn things. I'm also a little bummed that I was wait-listed for Lucerne and Domaine Forget chamber music, but I already have answers in my mind:

a) Molly and Rose got into Lucerne, and they are quite a bit older than me, meaning that they are rather close to the cutoff age for that, and I'm pretty far off, so I can still try again.

b) I'm not Canadian, nor do I go to McGill or Glenn Gould, nor do I know any of the Domaine faculty. They also only take a handful of violas, and I imagine many of them keep coming back, so...

But honestly, I just wanted to go to a free festival, since I've never gotten into one before, and I've never really gotten into anything special or awesome before. Oh well! Now, just to decide whether to go to Banff or Bang on a Can. (Mountains/4 star resort or potentially good experience playing contemporary stuff?) TBD.

For now, I'll just keep being lazy.

listening to: the free urban outfitters samplers LSTN 8