USA schedule is up! and it's making me nervous!

The schedule for USA is now up! (The jury list has been up for a while, also.) It looks like all the stages are crammed together this year, not spaced out with days of rest between stages like in 2007. It makes me nervous just to look at the schedule! That's probably good, since it is good motivation to practice... I spent an hour working on the memory of the Renie pieces on the piano today, which was a really good use of time. I've spent pretty much all of my harp practice time today on L'Hirondelle, which I think is sounding really solid at this point. I can play it memorized on the piano, slowly on the harp, up to tempo on the harp, and mentally (this means thinking through/listening to the imaginary music in my head without looking at the score). I'm very proud of that piece. I can't wait to get Le Coucou and Tic-Toc-Choc to that level of preparation! I have Le Coucou basically memorized now, but it needs lots of review. Tic-Toc-Choc needs the most work, since it's only about half-memorized. I have to go to church rehearsal now, but after it's over I'm going to (I hope) finish the memory of the Parish Alvars and play through it and L'Hirondelle for Abe. Exciting stuff!

happy day!

I am excited today because I think I have found a partial solution to my back problems, which have been getting worse daily the last few weeks. Someone mentioned yesterday that the cold weather had been bothering them and making their joints hurt, which made me wonder if maybe the change in weather was messing with my back. We had been leaving the heat at 67 or so at night to save money on heat, and my back always hurts more when I wake up... so last night, we turned the heat up to 72, and when I woke up this morning, my back didn't hurt at all! It ached a little when I went out to accompany this morning, which makes sense because it's cold outside. Definitely it's worth a few extra dollars to pay for higher heat if it will help my back. Heat is cheaper than visits to the chiropractor.

I had some good news this morning in my email: I got the accompanying gig offered to me last night by email, by virtue of being the first person to apply out of the people the vocal professor, Carol Vaness, asked! I will play for one lesson per day next week for a baritone who won lessons with Carol Vaness at some competition. Apparently, the competition will pay for the lessons and the accompanist for them. This means five lessons for me, plus possibly a few rehearsals. For the five lessons, I will make $75 or $100, depending on whether they need me for 30 or 40 minutes per lesson. Either way, it's some easy extra money!

My back ached all day yesterday, but I practiced anyway. I reviewed some of the Parish Alvars that I hadn't looked at in a few days, memorized another page or so of it, and reviewed the new memory in L'Hirondelle. I have a busier schedule today, but I hope to get more done today because I feel much better. My goal for tonight is to play through Parish Alvars and L'Hirondelle memorized for Abe. Even if it's rough, it will be good to do it. I need to go now to memorize the rest of the Parish Alvars Rondo!

Tuesday

It turned out that memorizing the Renie pieces on the piano was a really good idea--I now am probably 2/3 memorized instead of... a lot less than that. L'Hirondelle is pretty much memorized; it just needs more practice, but basically I can play through it now! I didn't realize this until yesterday, but Le Coucou is a rondo in the form ABACA, and all I have left to memorize is the C section--just five lines. Tic-Toc-Choc needs the most work; it's only about half-way memorized. I hope to get all three pieces memorized so that I can play through them (though probably with mistakes) on Wednesday evening. That means I'll have them memorized a week ahead of playing them in masterclass, which will give me time to practice playing through them a bunch of times.

I have spent less time on Parish Alvars the last few days because I have less left to memorize. I need to spend more time on it today! I only have a couple of (easy-ish) pages left to memorize for that piece, so I will do a page or a page and a half today and another page tomorrow. I also need to spend time reviewing the beginning of the piece. It is a long piece! It's in three sections (the title is Introduction, Cadenza, and Rondo), and the Introduction includes two pages of tricky arpeggios, in which the patterns are totally inconsistent and therefore difficult to remember. I really need to spend some more time on those arpeggios, since I've given them a break the last few days.

I saw Miss McDonald today, because I needed her to sign my lecture recital program in order to sign up for a recital date. My recital will be on Saturday, January 16, at 2 PM, in the best hall at IU. I'm excited that I got the hall and date that I wanted! She told me that she's excited to hear me play in class next week and remembered that she hasn't heard me play anything for almost a year and a half. Translation: I need to sound good in masterclass, since she doesn't really remember what I sound like...

I have the rest of the day off, due to various cancellations, and I've already done my errands and exercise for the day. That means I have the rest of the day to practice! and probably take a nap.

Monday morning, start of a new week!

I am excited that one of my accompanying people rescheduled today's rehearsal for tomorrow, and I was able to move my other appointments so that I only have to work at school today from 1:30 to 2:45! Most days I have to work from 10 or 11ish to at least 3 or 4, plus something in the evening, so I'm excited about having lots of time for myself today. I slept in an extra hour, and I still have time to exercise, eat a healthy meal, and be early for my 1:30.

This weekend was kinda crazy--I didn't end up practicing the harp at all. I did memorize large sections of the Renie pieces, though--on the piano! I discovered that the Renie pieces are way easier to play on the piano, which makes sense since they were originally written for the harpsichord, and the phrasing also makes much more sense on the piano. (Translation: when I play it on the harp, it's going to sound better now.) These pieces are laborious to practice on the harp, which makes memorization very difficult. I'm excited that I was able to memorize large portions of the pieces on the piano in a much shorter amount of time than I was expecting to spend on it. Now, I just need to transfer my memory to playing the pieces on the harp. That should not be too difficult, since I have been desultorily practicing these pieces off and on all summer. I was super-worried a few days ago about getting the Renie pieces memorized in time... no longer! I will have to update later tonight to tell you how it goes playing the now-partially-memorized pieces on the harp.

My first blog post/Parish Alvars and Renie

I am starting this blog partly because my mother asked me to, partly because I've been meaning to start some kind of journal, and alo because I finally have something slightly interesting to write about for my mom to read. I recently decided that I'm definitely going to do the USA International Harp Competition in July of 2010, so I'm probably going to focus this blog on my preparation for that. I am going to keep track of my day-to-day progress in memorizing and working on the music for the competition.


The repertoire for the competition is divided into four "stages," each of which consists of a list of several pieces which I have to learn, memorize, and perform. I'm working on the music for the first stage now, since that will be the first thing I have to play in the competition. The four pieces I've chosen for the first stage (there were very limited choices available) are, in the order I plan to perform them: 1) Introduction, Cadenza, and Rondo by Parish Alvars; 2) Impromptu by Roussel; 3) three Classical pieces transcribed by the harpist Henriette Renie--L'Hirondelle, Le Coucou, and Tic-Toc-Choc; and 4) La Vida Breve by De Falla, transcribed by Marcel Grandjany.

I've set an ambitious goal to play the Parish Alvars and the three Renie pieces in masterclass a week and a half from now, on November 4. I've spent the last few days fighting a cold (which I think I've gotten rid of in only two days by sleeping a lot and taking ridiculous amounts of Vitamin C) and trying to memorize these pieces. The Parish Alvars is in good shape--I really only have a couple of pages of the Rondo left that are not memorized, and they won't be too difficult to finish. I'm more stressed about the Renie pieces--I have two of the three pages of L'Hirondelle (my favorite of the three) memorized solidly and I know I can finish that piece within the next few days, but I've barely started memorizing Le Coucou and Tic-Toc-Choc. I would like to have them all memorized by this coming Wednesday so I will have a week to practice performing them for my husband, Abe, and whoever else I can convince to listen to me... but that would mean I'd have to memorize at least a page per day, which is a lot!