"I am suddenly alive..."

The shock of winter,
The coming on of spring...
Suspended summer nights,
The evening flights that
only fall can bring...

I am suddenly alive,
I would sail across the world for just the color of your eyes.
You appear, appear to me.

--"Octet" from The Light in the Piazza

The past couple weeks have been a blast! My school orchestra had our first concert with our substitute and it turned out to sound really wonderful. I've also noticed that with the music he selected for us, I had to be pushed to think while I'm playing to play it well, and I don't know if it's because he's commanded us a couple times that I finally got to understand how important that was, or if I had grown wiser as a musician and decided to do it on my own too. Anyway, preparation for the first concert and the actual performance turned out to help me grow a lot, and I'm so grateful.
 I wrote a review about it on the orchestra blog.

This week I also have my recital list finalized so I don't have to worry about picking out a new song to practice and to perfect in a limited amount of time because A) I have been working on some beautiful pieces yet never had the chance to perform them, so the recital's perfect for them, and B) I'd much rather spend so much time perfecting the sound of the pieces I already know the notes by heart. I feel like since my recital's in March and also because I am a lazy person when it comes to practicing (Hahaha....), I can get a lot more valuable work done perfecting musicality in four months rather than technicality in a new piece and then having little time to touch on musicality.

So far, the program is:

1. People of the Far North - Nobuo/Hamauzu
2. Attack on Bevelle - Hamauzu
3. Besaid Island - Hamauzu
4. The Swan - Saint Saens
5. Pavane for the Dead Princess - Ravel
6. Vocalise - Rachmaninoff
7. Concerto in B minor op. 35 - Rieding

And it'd last to about 33 minutes at minimum which rocks. I really only need 20 minutes to send to IB, but going over makes me feel great.

I also found out today that my math grade jumped up two letter grades on my report card thanks to a massive test, THANK YOU CALCULUS.

Things are looking well. Annie out!