3 in 1
It was a special day today, considered quite important because there are lots of important things that was going to happen.
The three things are:
1) Masterclass
2) Score-reading Exam
3) Conducting lesson with Yang Li, first time conducting "Unfinished Symphony"
I slept the night before with a smile, thinking I’d be waking up to something sweet. But then, luckily I was ready to be dissapointed, or my day would be thrown in a total different direction. I seriously think that the way you wake up will determine how the rest of your day would be. Start your day with Nescafe… (commercial break). WAKAKAKA. Okay. My alarm went off at 7:10am and I jerked up from my bed, knowing that it was way passed the time that polar promised. But it was A-o-kay. It was later on replaced with a nice breakfast opposite school with some pao’s … a cup of hot tea… eggs and fish balls… Then it was time to practice score-reading because today was an important day for score-reading — EXAM.
9am sharp, I reached the first conducting classroom and got to know Professor Gibson from the music school, University of Ciccinati, USA. The 2nd important thing happening today -Masterclass. It was very fun, Professor Gibson was VERY humorous and made us laugh from start to end. I was the translator again, haha.. I really like this job. Because you’ll have to translate every phrase. And I was kinda getting naughty doing it…
Gibson: "Don’t beat your beats too much! (With A LOT of Expression) CARE FOR THE MUSIC"
Me: (Immitating the exact tone and hand actions "别老是打拍子！*raises eyebrows, widen eyes, inhales heavily, raises hands into air* 要关爱音乐多一些！"
Gibson: (Laughs whilst pointing at me) "Hahahahaha…"
Me: (Laughs whilst pointing at him, immitating) "Hahahahaha…"
- Whole class laughs -
He’s point of views was very similiar to my teacher, Yang Li… and often says the same thing. Here are some quotes from him that I myself pretty much enjoyed.
1) If you live with the beat, you’ll die with the beat.
2) Be an empty cup. Let the soul of the music fill you.
3) Forget about your feelings, forget about your thoughts, forget you. In music, you do not exist.
4) Never lie. Never lie to your orchestra, never lie to the composer, and never lie to yourself.
5) From Leonard Berstein who once said it to Gibson when he was studying under him: "Conducting is all about believing. Believing in sound."
It was a nice masterclass and I learned a lot and it made me think a lot. Usually when I interprate music, it was through how I feel, what I think the music should sound like and how I want the music to be. But he totally woke me up today. When I hold the baton and stand on the roastrum, I am no longer myself. My body is a tool. A tool for the composer’s soul to run through and later bring music to its life form. I am but the eyes. And he was quite right about how chinese … asians teach. "Do you want to bring up another conductor, or do you want to bring up another you?"
At 2pm, I had my score-reading exam. It went pretty smoothly, like what I had expected. Although there are slight slips here and there, but it was 95% correct. Pretty happy with myself. =]
Then I had conducting lessons. It was kinda torturing. Because knowing that I’ll be conducting the same piece - Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony- for my mid-year exam with HuangYi just gives me a lot of EXTRA un-needed stress. Well, he IS much better than me in many ways. One thing is "confidence". It just keeps ray-ing from him like sunshine~! And no matter how much I try, I just couldn’t transfer that pile of energy from the inner-me onto my baton and into the music. And it really feels bad when all I get from teacher Yang Li is "Wrong." "No." "C’mon." "Nope." "Don’t." "Please." and after his first attempt, it was "GREAT." "Very well." "Good." "Exactly." "Yeap." …… sigh …… ""That’s very confident-building."" And Unfinished Symphony is REALLY REALLY hard to conduct, musically and physically. It is so sad, so tragic, so UGH! And I’ve only endured 18 years of life… as though I’ve been through anything THAT tragedic. But this is the good part, I can do it better than HuangYi. LOL. Although teacher didn’t praise me, he didn’t comment about my feeling towards the music either… which probably means I’m going at the right direction. Sigh, I just wish my hands and my body would listen to my heart and not my mind.
That’s about it. Haven’t blogged about my normal life for some time, just thought I’d update a little.
