Performances (Suzanne)

So, on Friday, I got sick. Fever of 38.5 degrees, chills in 30 degree weather, sore throat, coughing, and all.

You know something’s wrong with you when the most annoying thing about a 38.5 degree fever is that it raises the temperature of your breath enough to make you play sharp at Saturday and Sunday’s orchestra rehearsal. (OK, I did feel like total crap on Friday and couldn’t have cared less about my playing, but on the weekend I felt well enough to stress)

Thankfully, by the end of Sunday my temperature went down enough for me to play in tune for the Monday night concert. Which, by the way, went awesomely, because nobody could tell that I completely bluffed my way through all my ‘solos’ (They’re not really solos, because I’m 2nd clarinet, and 1st clarinet and I pass the melody back and forth between each other, but we are technically each carrying the melody on our own during our turns). The other two pieces in the concert, which I didn’t play in because woodwinds rotate seats, sounded great, and we had a fun little party afterwards at the Glenferrie Hotel where I got to meet all the people whose faces, but not names, I knew from rehearsals. Unfortunately, I can’t relax because I signed up to play in concert class on Thursday, and I’ve got to go practise for that.

Concert class is basically a class which is a component of Practical Study 1-1, which is the main focus of a performance-based music degree here. Every week each year takes turns to hold a recital. Everyone in your year goes to watch the recital, and there’s a signup beforehand for people who volunteer to play. You put on the recital, do the bows, etc, and the people in the audience later hand in a review of your performance which you can read. Every fourth week is an all-years recital.

This week is an all-years. Therefore, I will be playing, alone except for an accompanist, in front of pretty much the whole population of undergrad music students, and I get to hog the whole stage for 12 minutes, playing the most famous concerto ever written for clarinet from memory, which undoubtedly everyone in the audience will know. I AM GOING TO DIE. I WAS HIGH ON SOMETHING WHEN I PUT MY NAME DOWN. WHAT WAS I THINKING? I WON’T EVEN GET TO WARM UP BECAUSE I HAVE FREAKING LEGAL METHOD AND REASONING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF CAMPUS STRAIGHT BEFORE AND I’LL HAVE TO RUN TO MAKE IT IN TIME! It’ll be fun, and good experience and all that jazz. 🙂

I am starting to entertain the idea of dropping law. It will probably not go anywhere because I actually genuinely like law, I just think that it’s limiting a lot of my music opportunities. Thoughts?

(I should probably make the disclaimer that I’ve entertained that idea quite a lot recently, but all of them have been at times where there is a big unappetizing pile of reading like the one currently on my desk due the next day.)