It's called a FOOTpath!

Cyclists out there - get off the footpath and onto the road where your wheels belong! As a pedestrian I reserve the right to walk along in my own little world, wandering freely from the left side of the footpath to the right, and then back again, without worrying about some douchebag cyclist zooming up on me from behind and mowing me down.

The vanishing post

I just put up a new post, but it was an extension of a draft I started in January, so it's appeared under the January heading - look out for it, it's called "You say tomayto, I say ANGER!"

A Californian Holiday

After a week of music making in Berkeley, San Francisco, I am now sunning myself down in southern California before my friend Mike's wedding on the 20th. This is my first time in this part of the state, and it's really pretty. I took the train and bus down from Berkeley to San Luis Obispo, where Mike picked me up, and we drove 15 minutes to nearby Los Osos, close to the beach. The beach at Morro Bay is notable for a giant rock, similar to Piha beach in New Zealand, which I coincidentally went to recently on a day off with the Wallfisch Band.

The time in Berkeley was fantastic. Although I was being put up at a friend's place in neighbouring Concord, all the music making happened at various locations in Berkeley, a wonderful area with boutique shops and a friendly atmosphere. There is a great shop there called The Musical Offering, which specialises in an awesome collection of period instrument CDs. I also got carried away in a local book shop...aahh, if only I had a million bucks, I would buy both shops and not let any customers in, so that I could just live there.

The concerts went very well, and the audiences seemed to love us. We had our own concert on the 10th, which was well attended, and then the festival finale, which featured all the different groups that had played throughout the festival. The finale programme was LONG - 2 hours and 15 minutes without an interval, as it represented a Vespers service. I was glad I didn't have to make a dash off the stage for the loo, as I did towards the end of the first act of Parsifal several years ago with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. That was only an hour and fifty minutes long, but within the first ten minutes of the act I started getting increasingly busting, and I could only hold on for about an hour and ten minutes before I had to make a quick exit. Fortunately I was at the back of the orchestra, so could be fairly discreet. But anyway, this time I was fine, and survived the whole concert. Each group played about two pieces on their own at various stages, and then there was a final combined performance of Vivaldi's Magnificat.

There was some nice time to relax during the week as well. One day I went on a trip with a few other people to the Napa wine region, where we enjoyed some wine-tasting at a couple of local wineries, then had a fantastic meal at a wonderful restaurant in Sonoma called The Harvest Moon. They have a menu that changes daily, with all-organic foods, and an amazing dessert selection. The owner/chef of the restaurant married a pastry-chef, so they're the perfect husband and wife team. It was some of the best food I've ever had.

So, now it's time for some more relaxation down in Los Osos! More details at the end of the week...

I am not a danger to your country, I assure you!

After a 15 hour plane journey, I'm now in Concord, CA, getting ready for a concert of 17th Century Venetian music with ¡Sacabuche!, Paul Elliott and Nigel North this Thursday night:

¡Sacabuche! at the Berkeley Early Music Festival

So, if you're in the Berkeley area, come along! Tickets are apparently selling quite well.

The Wallfisch band came to a close on the 24th of May, which was sad. By the time we played in Auckland -the final venue - we had really started smoking! LW was such a great leader, with a perfect blend of positive inspiration combined with the nitty-gritty orchestral hygiene stuff. Individually, I think I made a fairly good impression, and I'm starting to think of the idea of heading straight over to Europe after I finish in Indiana to get work. But there's still plenty of time to plan!

A week and a half later, just before I left for the US, I performed a concert with Douglas Mews on harpsichord. I got in some good last-minute advertising on the radio and on the Chamber Music NZ online newsletter, but unfortunately it wasn't enough to get a particularly large audience along. Those who came, though, seemed to enjoy it, and I made a little bit of money out of it. The programme turned out to be really good too; a 17th century first half, an 18th Century second half, with a combination of accompanied and unaccompanied music. It was great to play with Douglas too; no matter what I did, he was right there with me!

This time on my travels, I came into the US through San Francisco, which was a welcome change from Los Angeles. The immigration guy that I went through was still quite tough though - he questioned me on what I was doing in that irritating 'you-are-a-danger-to-my-country' way that they have all cultivated so well, but in the end I was let through with no secondary inspection. HOORAY! Either the situation has genuinely been resolved this time, or the LA customs inspectors are just less lenient. I guess I won't know until I go through LA again, which hopefully is never. Actually, I'm not sure when the next time will be that I even come into America again, given that this is the last chunk of my studies.

I was picked up in SF by a lovely woman who is a friend of the woman who organizes the Berkely Early Music Festival, and she drove me all the way to Concord, about 30 minutes out, where I'm staying for the next week. The weather is about as different from Wellington as you can get - hot, sunny, birds chirping. Goodbye to the incessant rain and misery that is NZ at the moment!

On tour with the Wallfisch Band

I'm writing from a motel room in Hamilton, NZ at the moment. Today is a day off in the middle of the Wallfisch Band's tour of the North Island. We played in Wellington two days ago, then in Napier last night. Tomorrow night we play here in Hamilton, followed by the final concert in Auckland on Monday night. This final concert is being recorded live by Radio NZ concert, so we'll all have to nail our music then! It has been an awesome experience working with Elizabeth Wallfisch, her colleagues and the other NZ musicians - I just wish the tour could have been extended to the South Island; it would have been fantastic to take the programme down there and to travel around the breathtaking landscape.

Today was a travel day - we drove from Napier to Hamilton and had time to stop off for some touristy activities. It was a beautiful day with fantastic countryside views. We were all squeezed into one travel van, which made it feel like a real band tour. We stopped in Taupo for lunch, then had a small break at a great place called the Honey Hive; a shop selling fantastic honey and honey products. There was free tasting too, so I took advantage of this and sampled some very tasty honey wine and even some honey whiskey, which was my personal favourite. With a manuka chestnut icecream in hand, we continued on and stopped at some local mud pools. It was just a look though, as the mud pools were boiling and blurping like mad. If we'd jumped in for a dip, we would have quickly bobbed to the surface as screaming, steaming carcasses of burnt flesh.

The Europeans amongst us were delighted to see all the sights along the way - for some of them it's been their first time in NZ. Hopefully they will be inspired to return, for Wallfisch Band tour No. 2!

Venetian Fun

I'm chilling out in my hotel room in Auckland, NZ at the moment, halfway through a 6 day period of rehearsals for a concert tour with the Wallfisch Band, led by baroque violinist Elizabeth Wallfisch. After a couple more days, we head back to Wellington for the first performance, followed by a trip up the North Island back to Auckland, stopping for concerts in Napier and Hamilton along the way. It's been a fantastic experience so far, and the music is coming together fabulously. Elizabeth Wallfisch is an awesome director, with a perfect balance between bringing out the fun and spontaneity in the music, and kicking ass when needed, to make sure that everyone's playing in a unified way. She introduced 9am scale warm-ups for those who want to attend, so I went this morning and will be going again in the next couple of days. It's a nice way to warm the fingers up before 10am rehearsals, and a good chance to get some tips from the master herself as to how to get around the technique of playing the violin without chinrest or shoulder rest (though she does get around the problem a little by using a rolled up spongy device of some kind under the violin, held by a rubber band).

The programme features some great music by Locatelli and Vivaldi - a mixture of concerti for solo violin, two violins, two violins + two cellos, and four violins; and concerti grossi. The music is fantastic - I particularly love the Locatelli - one of his concerti features ridiculous pyrotechnics for the solo violin. You'd think he was just another shallow Paganini, but then he pulls out some amazingly beautiful and harmonically surprising slow movements, that are to die for. It's not particularly taxing music for those who are just playing the 'orchestra' parts, like me, but then again, the small size of the band means that we're all that much more exposed, so we have to all be individually on top of our parts - there are some moments where I'm the only one playing my part, which is cool. Maybe I'll pull out some ridiculous ornaments in the concert - haha, no one can stop me! Other than myself, of course, as it could potentially sound stupid...

Crazy times

It's been almost a month since I last wrote, and quite frankly, things have been ridiculously busy, and still are. But today has been a particularly strange day, so I may as well write about that, and sum up what's been going on in the last few weeks.

It's that time of the semester when everything seems to be happening at once. Coming up tomorrow evening is the Baroque Orchestra concert with Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Rebel's Les Elémens. Stanley Ritchie, my teacher, is the soloist, and he sounds amazing. His interpretation is also unique - he claims he has never listened to a recording of the piece, so that explains his fresh approach. On Monday it's straight back into rehearsals for the next orchestra concert - only ten days away - in which a number of students get to perform a concerto or solo piece with the orchestra. Coming up on the 6th of March, I'm also playing in a performance of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet with friends. Anyone who's ever played that piece will know that it's extremely challenging in many ways - for ensemble, intonation and musical feeling, not to mention the awkwardness of individual parts. And then, starting this Friday evening, and hopefully lasting no more than two evenings, I'm recording Bach's G minor solo sonata as part of applications for the Leipzig Bach competition and the American Bach Soloists Academy, both happening in July this year. So this is going to be a crazy week, in which I will not have nearly enough time to practise. Somehow I'll have to get through it without going insane.

In the last few weeks I was involved in the Monteverdi Vespers, which went really well. We played both here and in Indianapolis. Indy was particularly memorable because after the concert I went with some friends to an awesome chocolate cafe where I had a Mexican hot chocolate and a couple of chocolate truffles. I also played in a concert organised and directed by a fellow violinist friend of mine, in which I played second violin in Bach's Concerto for three violins, BWV 1064. My friend also played a Vivaldi concerto amazingly, and a soprano friend performed a Vivaldi motet stunningly. It was all in all an excellent concert and musical experience - the audio and video turned out pretty well too, so I may be able to post some of that next time once I get a copy. My part for the Bach concerto had a ridiculously florid and virtuosic solo in the last movement - I got to play twenty four bars of non-stop semiquavers, reminiscent of the solo in Brandenburg concerto No. 4. I was so hyped up during the performance, that afterwards I couldn't remember playing a single note of it.

I haven't even mentioned classes yet - a few days ago I did an hour long group presentation on string bowings for Classical performance practice class, and the Bach Cantata class that I'm doing involves weekly assignments and time practising parts for the Thursday class performances. It feels great to be so busy, but at the same time I'm craving a break! Only a couple of weeks until Spring Break, and then another couple of weeks until I fly to Oregon! Sweeet!!

Back to the strange events of today. This morning we had a dress rehearsal for the Baroque Orchestra concert. It lasted three hours and was quite draining; things were still going wrong in terms of ensemble and intonation and there was some frustration being felt all round. After that, Marie and I went to get some lunch, and we were driving in her car and pulled up to a red light. As we were sitting there waiting for the light to go green there was an almighty bang and we were shunted forward in our seats. We had been rear-ended. We composed ourselves and got out of the car, to find that there was absolutely no damage to either car. The person behind said she'd spilled her coke all over herself, and hadn't stopped in time. So we carried on and had lunch at a burrito place and chilled out. After that it was back to school to practise, as we had scheduled a time to run through our Bach sonatas for each other - Marie's also going for the Leipzig competition. So I was practising in my room, with half an hour to go before the run-through, and SNAP!!! My A-string broke. Memories of my dreadful audition at Oberlin came flooding back - the exact same thing happened half an hour before my audition, and I ended up playing more out of tune than I've ever done in my life, because the string kept going flat. So, the same thing happened during the Bach run through. Each movement got more and more out of tune - poor Marie had to sit and endure it.

So that was a bizarre day, and I'm now back at home listening to Chopin and playing Scrabble on Facebook. Weird.