Sunday, August 08, 2004
Tintern open day 2004.
today is the school open day. me, being, hardworking as usual (ahem), arrived at school at 10:00am for orchestra rehearsal. it was drizzling, and extremely cold, a superb day. couldn't have been better.
anyway, pretty soon most ppl gathered at the music department and we were doing our first warmups by 10:20am. we ran through 'pungu aaku' (alright, the spelling seriously doesn't matter, whatever) and 'pirates'. it sounded ok - we obviously need some more time to rehearse in order to iron out the kinks here and there. i was just a little paranoid about miscounting the beats after that debacle last thursday when i nearly killed the enitre orchestra by coming in at the wrong time.
rehearsals ended at 11, and frankly, there werent many ppl who dropped in to watch. kinda disappointing. went to the library with mandy, coz we had nothing better to do. the international students' corner is at the library, and it was positively swarming with international students: there was a thai corner where the thai girls were making paper fish, a chinese corner where the chinese gals were writing calligraphy (yea calligraphy!), and a japanese corner where the jap girls were making origami. oh yea, ppl were serving chinese tea too. i wanted to have a cup, but remembered that i have a terrible cold, and better stay away to avoid contaminating the cups. haiz....
after that, still nothing to do, as there werent much visitors at the library anyway. hmm, seems like a pretty poor turnout this year. oh well~ went to 'steal' food from the boarding house with mandy, beth and steph. sandwiches again...just my luck. but i can cope. i did.
after that, hurried back to the cm wood centre for the finale rehearsal. the compose of our finale, paul jarman, was there. he is absolutely awesome! and cool to the bones... and his music....oh his music...
ahem. well, he rehearsed with us, and we went through all 4 of the songs in 'turn on the open sea': 'shackleton', 'the sea of berries', 'volta do mar largo', and 'ancient city'. great pieces, absolutely wonderful, and i suppose i fell in love with them the first time i heard them.
i sat on the side for 'shcakleton' and 'sea of berries' as i dont have a part. i sang, well tried to sing (i dont have the music and i dont remember half the words :p) though. volta was erm...ok....there's no other way to put it...a disaster. because of percussion. because of me. because i cant count. (what on earth am i doing playing percussion????!!!!!) well, mr. jarman was really nice about it, although he did point straight out that percussion needed more work. ok, i know. i know. i'll work.
the session was absolutely enjoyable. i LOVED it. i wish it would never end. heard mr. jarman saying he would have liked to spend 2 hours on each song. i wouldn't have minded. it would be fun. it would be. it would it would it would. yeha, i'll stop.
workshop ended 2:30 pm, and i went straight to help out at the library. they were still doing the same stuff in there, except different ppl were doing it. i tried calligraphy, but it has been so long, i cant write properly. i guess if liu lao shi saw what i wrote, he'd have a fighting fit. yes, that bad, sigh...session ended 4:00 something, and i went home, slightly tired but wishing that the rehearsals could have lasted longer. yes, it was that good.
oh well, all things come to an end. so does this post.
(how can i keep typing when my hands are frozen cold?)
..signing off..
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