Lakme

Just came back from a 3 hour stint at the opera. A friend gave me her season ticket for Delibes' Lakme. Hubby wasn't interested so I invited another friend to accompany me in the nosebleed section. Leah Partridge was the ill-fated coloratura soprano for this production and was spectacular in the bell song. I was startled to hear a familiar tune during "The flower duet". Classical music can creep into pop consciousness when one least expects it.

Helping the Economy

I seem to run against society's trends. Now that folks are busy saving their money in anticipation of doomsday, I've been spending like water the past two days. Sunday was a shopping trip via Amazon to buy a pair of folding scissors and some other stuff I've had on my wish list for months. Yesterday I splurged on a pair of shoes. I'm a one-shoe trick pony. I have a certain style I like and I tend to wear one pair of shoes to death. I threw out my last pair when I tripped in them a couple of weeks ago. You see, the soles were starting to come undone. Guess I shouldn't complain those shoes probably lasted over 4 years.

On the cello frontier, I had a chance to play the first movement of the Breval for the chamber music teacher last night. He thought I should perform it this term and assigned the piano part to another one of his students.

On the Mend

Other than a little cough, I'm finally well again. Wrist/hand also back to normal. Today I actually got to practice the cello. To celebrate I went to Amazon and bought stuff.

Tonight was the last night of a Charles Ives Festival by New World Symphony here in Miami.

Hubby was so excited when we went Friday night. There was a lecture before the concert which featured Ives' various experimental works - The Unanswered Question, Central Park in the Dark, Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano, From the Steeples and Mountains, Scherzo: Over the Pavements, and the famous "Three Places in New England" set. Hubby hasn't been this enthused over a concert for a long time.

Saturday featured Ives' Holidays Symphony. The first half of the concert had the choir sing the hymns, popular, war, and college songs that Ives quoted in his Holidays Symphony. Intermission seemed to take forever and then the Holiday Symphony which started interesting enough just seemed to drag. It became a long evening.

Tonight was Ives' Sonata #2 for Piano "Concord, MA" followed by another long intermission and then an orchestration version of the sonata. By the end of the evening, we were Ives' out and I had a headache. There's not a whole lot of form to the pieces and as far as I was concerned the Emerson and Thoreau sections could have been struck from the program (or at least shortened in half). At least Hawthorne had some musical humor and there were some lyrical sections to Alcott. All in all we were glad that the festival was over. I don't think we could have stood another evening of Ives.

Sniffle

I've managed to fight colds so far this year. Several times, I've woken up with a scratchy throat, downed a bunch of Vitamin C and Airborne and the symptoms went away. Sad to say, today I lost the battle. I started sneezing around 10am while I was out at a client's. Canceled the rest of today's and tomorrow's appointments. Came home and passed out for four hours. Too late for Zicom. Had some chicken soup and theraflu.

Passed

"Passed" that's all my unofficial test score report states. The joys of taking a computerized test is that one gets the results instantly. Good enough. Test didn't have any questions on poetry, jazz or dance. However it had more philosophy than I would have liked to have seen. Plenty of art, history, music, film, and literature along with questions re: creating lesson plans.

Time out for a breather and for my left hand to heal.

Countdown 1 and Taking a Fall

Tomorrow's the big test. I've been taking sample tests all week, so hopefully, I'll be prepared.

This morning, I tripped and fell on some concrete. Scrapped my knees and hurt my left hand. Probably going to have to lay off cello practice for a couple of days. The hand is not swollen and I can close my hand and type, but certain motions seem to hurt it. I landed fairly hard so all in all I guess I'm lucky.

Computer Crash and Boring Stats

I really should have known better than hit "update" on my desktop computer. Windows Service Pack 3 tried to install and the computer refused to boot up afterwards. Had to do an HP system restore. At least I didn't lose any data.

Boring cello stats:
Cello practice weeks 49-52 (25 days)
Total of 40 hours. Avg 1.5 hrs per day.
Bow, left hand, thumb, trill, vibrato exercises every day
Suzuki pieces 18x
Chamber music pieces 10x
Romantic pieces 6x