A little blogging twist today – I’m going to add short notes to this post throughout the day, and publish near the end of the day.
26 November 2015
8:12 am, Central Daylight Time
The day is starting off a little differently than I hoped. The family is still sleeping (good for them!) so I can’t begin practicing full-bore (or even at all) yet. So instead, I’m going to do a little housekeeping (monitoring finances in Quicken) and then study the audition music. Specifically, I want to make a very few notes for each excerpt about what is happening in the opera at the point the excerpt takes place. It might help my playing be more expressive. More angles of familiarity with the music can’t hurt. I hope it will prove a good use of otherwise dead time. (Okay, to be honest, if I were the kind of person who was capable of sleeping in, that might be best for me. But I’m something of a lark; I might lie in bed for a couple hours and just get more anxious.)
10:20 am
Able to get started at 10. Have warmed up. Will now shuffle the excerpts and play through everything while recording.
1:30 pm
It’s working out. I’m up to the part where I “interleave” the excerpts and work on stuff. Have to break to have Thanksgiving meal with family and friends now.
27 November, 9:10 am
Family & friends time made up the rest of the day yesterday. My feeling about yesterday, regarding audition preparation: “not disappointed.”
In the spirit of Thanksgiving (explanation, if you didn’t grow up in this culture*), I will say that, in addition to the blessings of health and family, I am grateful that I have the opportunity to work this hard on music, with such a clear goal and challenge. It’s a good ride.
* I like the idea of, but haven’t researched at all, “wopila,” a celebration of the Native Americans of the Great Plains, precedent to “Thanksgiving” but similar, if what the wikipedia entry linked above suggests is accurate.