Finished.

Well, this past Thursday was my recital. The few weeks leading up to it were brutal. I've never dealt with so much stress. I remember feeling... well, rather, I remember not feeling anything during those last two weeks or so. It was like I just didn't have room in my schedule to have emotions! All I had time to do was focus and practice.

Unfortunately, this past Monday (three days before my recital), my tendinitis flared up again in my right hand. It's still bothering me, although the massage and day off I enjoyed yesterday has helped a lot. If it had happened a month earlier, I would've had to stop playing... but my recital was so soon, I knew it would stay in the acute stage if I just barreled through it and went to therapy as soon as possible. Which is what I did.

But despite all of the negative energy prior to my performance, I really feel my recital was a huge success. It was a little scary in the beginning, though! My program was as follows:

Electric Counterpoint

Steve Reich

And Legions Will Rise

Kevin Puts

...And Points North

Stuart Saunders Smith

Omar I

Franco Donatoni

Dances of Earth and Fire

(Movement 1: Con Brio)

Peter Klatzow

Improvisation for Solo Vibraphone

Doug Perry!

Encore: Village Burial with Fire

James Wood

Those of you familiar with the canon of contemporary percussion music might be thinking "wait, Village Burial was an encore? Are you kidding?" I will say, that was similar to what went through my head when my teacher suggested it. For an encore piece, it was by far the largest and most difficult setup we had to do.

Vic is following orders from behind a tremendous Village Burial setup.

While Village Burial took up pretty much the entire stage, I was setting up the actual bulk of my recital program on the floor. The marimba and vibraphone (as well as the electronics rig) was positioned stage left on the floor, which is where I played Electric Counterpoint, And Legions Will Rise, Omar I, and Dances of Earth and Fire. The rest of the floor was occupied by ...And Points North.

About 1/3rd of my ...And Points North setup.

...And Points North had quite a few technical difficulties, to say the least... Aside from my wind chime tree deciding it didn't want to stand anymore, the wind chimes got all tangled up in the process of transporting them to Peabody. I actually had a team that was dedicated to just untangling as many of them as possible while everyone else was setting up.

Kate (my violinist for And Legions Will Rise) and mom do their best to make these guys work.

Eventually, everything fell into place, and we were able to begin my recital at 8:40 pm, as opposed to 8:00 pm. While backstage, Bob (my teacher) and I decided to scratch the second movement of Dances of Earth and Fire from my program. As much as I wanted to play it, not only would I have been super exhausted by that point, but my recital would have gone on for way too long. We also removed the path of leaves from my ...And Points North setup for the same reason. It would've been really cool, but the cleanup would've added about 20 minutes to my program. I was very lucky to have not only a good sized audience, but a large audience that was willing to wait for all of this to get put together!

Overall, I was very pleased with how everything went! I was especially happy with Electric Counterpoint and ...And Points North. With both of these, I really felt I was completely attached to the music. ...And Points North was an experience I've never felt before--I felt like I had total control over the audience, and that they were just as involved with the piece as I was. I wish I had played parts of And Legions Will Rise better, especially considering the composer, Kevin Puts, was sitting in the audience. However, it was definitely the most emotionally satisfying performance we've had thus far. I'm really fortunate to have had the opportunity to play with the musicians who accompanied me (Kathryn Kilian on violin, Gleb Kanasevich on clarinet)--they are both super gifted and super dedicated.

I had a bit of a mallet mix-up before Omar I--I had put some of my mallets that I needed for it in my Village Burial setup. I let the audience know what was wrong, got my proper mallets, and played the piece fine. By this point I was beginning to get exhausted, so I was glad I was honest with the audience. If I had tried to play that piece with the wrong mallets, bad things would have happened, I'm sure.

I do wish my first movement of Dances of Earth and Fire had gone better. I was very glad I didn't play the second movement, though--if I was making as many mistakes as I was playing the first movement, the second would've been a nightmare. By this point, my brain was almost as taxed as my arms were. If I hadn't had a tendinitis flare-up, I might have been able to play the second movement. I was so mentally exhausted, however, I tend to believe it wouldn't have made much of a difference.

I ended my program with a free-form improvisation on vibraphone (in C minor-ish, of course) which, according to my cousin (and extraordinary camera man) Nick Piegari, sounded like a summary of my experience at Peabody. This is what I was hoping would happen, but I wasn't thinking about it at the time so it's pretty cool that it did for somebody.

Finally, Village Burial happened. And that's about all I'll say about it... it happened. It was a pretty casual performance--Bob invited the audience up to the stage to stand around it and watch it up close, and it was good practice for us before we have to play it for the Peabody Percussion Group concert tomorrow. A lot of things went wrong...but it was good that we got to have a "practice performance" of sorts.

And after that was done, I did this:

and then I did this:

My parents threw a pretty sweet reception for my at my apartment afterwards. They got me an awesome cake!

Artwork done years ago by the ever-talented Doug B. Horak.

And now, I'm done. Well, technically I'm not done... I have the Peabody Percussion Group concert tomorrow at 4 pm, I have a Peabody Concert Orchestra concert on April 30th, I have to play on Crystal's recital on May 3rd... but as far as I'm concerned, I'm done. The PPG concert is the only thing I really need to use my arms a lot for (I'm playing on the Lou Harrison Concerto for Organ with Percussion Orchestra, as well as playing And Legions will Rise and Village Burial with Fire again). After that, I just need to rest, do the little bit of playing I need to do, and try to see my wonderful physical therapist David Schulman as much as I can (who is extra awesome for coming to my recital).

Oh yeah, this post has been long enough, but I'll close by letting you all know: I'm not going to Yale next year. I'm going to the University of Kansas to study with Ji Hye Jung, as well as work for both her and jazz department director Dan Gailey as a graduate teaching assistant. Not only is it full scholarship and teaching experience, but I'll be getting paid by the school too. This literally came out of nowhere, and was too good of a deal for me to pass up. Getting paid to go to grad school... that's pretty cool. At least, until I audition for Yale again.

Yale is done.

At 10:45 am yesterday morning, the Yale percussion students helped me move all of my gear into the percussion studio to play what was definitely the most important audition of my life thus far. At around 8:30 pm yesterday, I was back in Baltimore, in the apartment I left looking exactly how I left it. Surreal to say the least.

All in all, I suppose I'm pretty happy about the way I played. I started with the first movement of Dances of Earth and Fire (so, just the earth), followed by Omar I, followed by a three minute free vibraphone improvisation, followed by sight-reading (which ended up being the preludes to the second and fifth Bach cello suites), followed by timpani: Carter's March, Mozart Symphony No. 39, Symphonic Metamorphosis, Burleske. From Timpani I moved to snare drum and played my Delécluse etude (No. 1) and just the first excerpt from Scheherazade, which was followed by my two keyboard excerpts (La Mer on glockenspiel and Exotic Birds on xylophone), and ended with (barely enough time for) about half of my theater/set-up piece, ...And Points North.

There were definitely things that I wish I had played better, but there were also things that I played much better than I was expecting. Of course, nerves played a huge factor in my audition, but I knew they would and did my best to prepare for it. I still wish that I could figure out a way to play snare drum without getting the shakes--snare drum is an instrument that I've worked very hard on improving, especially in the past year. It's very frustrating to work on something that hard, but lose about 50% of the work to shaking hands. Most of the practicing I did for this audition (as well as in general this year) was on snare drum.

There were nine total in the finals. I got the opportunity to meet and talk to most of them. Obviously, I already knew my Peabody comrade, Adam Rosenblatt--but other than us, people were coming from anywhere from Texas and Cleveland to China and Singapore. Everybody was really nice, and everybody was really good. When we were all sitting in the studio, taking our written exam/group interview, it sort of dawned on me: of the sixty-plus applicants who sent in tapes, Adam and I were invited to sit with seven of the best percussionists coming out of undergraduate school. For a few minutes, I literally could not believe I was sitting there with them.

As happy as I was with my audition, I really have no idea what's going to happen. Bob told us in our group interview that YSM is only looking to accept one, maybe two applicants. I had known this before, but being there with everybody really put it in perspective. There is literally a 1 in 9 chance that I will get in--maybe a 2 in 9 chance if I'm lucky. Everybody there was a different kind of musician, and everyone had something different to say.

I feel like, more than anything else, I wanted to show them that I was a musician before I was a percussionist. I didn't want them to think "what a good timpanist" or "what a good marimba player", or even "wow he's good at improvising" (which was a portion of the audition I think I was the only one to include). I wanted them to hear that more than anything else, in the core of all of my playing, I value making music over everything else. It doesn't matter what instrument I'm doing it on, or what setting I'm doing it in--making music was something that I was both fluent and fully invested in.

I find out before March 19th. While I was practicing at Yale, I felt strangely at ease. I felt really comfortable there, practicing fervently with all of my competition all around me, in their dirty basement studio. That place just reeked of real, down to earth hard work. I really felt like I could belong there.

I hope they felt the same way about me.

The grind

Well, Magfest came and went, and as usual it was a blast. I bought a bunch of video games (Final Fantasy Anthologies, Final Fantasy Chronicles, and Final Fantasy 7!), had a bunch of great jams with people, and even had an extended vacation when a handful of OCR folks stayed at my place for an additional three days. It was a lot of fun!

But now that the fun is over with, I've spent most of this month working the hardest I ever have. Lots has happened, but to summarize:

• My Yale audition is February 22nd
• My recital is either March 10th/11th, or April 15th
• I'm no longer enrolled as a student at Peabody, but am playing in orchestra in exchange for practice room usage.

Now that I have deadlines, I've basically spent every moment I have preparing for them in whatever ways I can. My hands have been the best they've been in a long time, and a 4 hour practice day is no longer a feat. I generally put in 3-5 hours of practice every day, depending on how much time I have. Sometimes my arms will give me some negative feedback, and I will have to rest--but for the most part they've done very well.

The only exception to this is my marimba playing, still. I'm having to practice with what my studio friend Adam Rosenblatt calls "Bastard Grip"--basically, Stevens grip in my left hand and Burton grip in my right. I want to be able to play with just Stevens grip, but right now my back two fingers and the muscles connected to them just can't provide the strength/support that I need to practice for a long time. So when I play marimba, about 75% of my practice is done with bastard grip--and the last 25% is done with matched Stevens.

The Yale deadline is fast approaching, and by February 22nd I need to play Donatoni's Omar, Klatzow's Dances of Earth and Fire, Delecluse's Etude No. 1 for snare drum, Carter's March for timpani, timpani excerpts from Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, Strauss' Burleske, Mozart's Symphony No. 39, Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis, snare drum excerpts from Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, xylophone excerpts from Messiaen's Exotic Birds, and glockenspiel excerpts from Debussy's La Mer--with the option of also playing my first movement of Smith's ...And Points North and Cirone's Etude No. 32 if I want. Much of this list is on my A list--a.k.a, pieces/excerpts I know well. This would include all of the excerpts, as well as Delecluse 1. The Carter would definitely be on my B list--I know the piece and almost have it memorized, but it needs a lot of polish.

The two big pieces, Omar and Dances, are on my C list--I'm still learning the notes. Most of my work has been on these pieces, and by forcing myself to learn a set amount of notes daily, I'm finding it becomes easier and easier. As of today, I have a page and a half of Dances left to learn, and a few lines less than a very large page of Omar. I do think by this time next week, if I can keep my pace up, I will be done learning the notes to both pieces. I will definitely be done with Dances, but as challenging as Omar is to learn, I think I can do it.

This audition will be the single most important moment of my life thus far. So, lets do it!

Winter Break!

Hey ya'll, it's been a while since I posted in here last. Been super busy with school--percussion concert, Cynthia Yeh masterclass, Tom Freer masterclass, etc etc. All of which went really well! All and all it was a great semester for me. Music for Pieces of Wood, which I mentioned in my last post, went really well--and helped my arms out a lot. My marimba-related problems are getting a lot better too, even though they're still somewhat present. My physical therapist seemed to find the part of my arm that was causing the problems, so I've only seen improvement since.

My grad school plans have changed a lot since the last update as well. I had a long talk with Bob about what my options were, and he pretty much left me with two options: I audition for Yale this year and get in, or I don't get in and try again next year. He seemed to think taking a semester off might actually be a bad idea, and going to a different grad school first would just leave me exhausted. He told me he thought I was ready, and he didn't think I would be playing that much more at Yale than I am here now. Him saying that definitely gave me a lot more hope, so I'm feeling pretty optimistic now. All I have to do is get this freakin' recital ready first!

I'm back home in Connecticut now, on my new laptop. Just flew in this evening, actually. This computer is super awesome--it's a Toshiba running Windows Vista. However, it came with a free mail-in upgrade to Windows 7! I am super excited about that. I recently got a job working at RadioShack (to fill in the slow winter season on Spirit Cruises right now), and found this there on clearance. This computer is a huge improvement from my last one, and I'm excited about all the music I'll (hopefully) be able to create with it. I need to get my Dwelling of Duels entry ready for Magfest!

Not much to say here, really. Or rather, too much to say in one blog post. Mainly just wanted to indicate to you all (and myself) that I'm still alive!

Grad School

I'm over halfway into this semester now, and I'm beginning to realize that I probably wont be able to learn my recital rep in time for my recital...whenever that's going to be. I guess we'll see what happens. My arms are way better than they were after the So incident now... but unfortunately there's still something wrong with my right arm. It mainly bothers me when I play marimba, but I even noticed it while playing Music for Pieces of Wood by Steve Reich yesterday (I'm beginning to find that my favorite composer may actually be my body's greatest foe). I guess I'll just have to keep doing what I'm doing, and wait and see what happens.

As I think ahead to auditioning for grad school next year, I've found myself having to explore more possibilities than just "I want to go to Yale." In fact, I'd say it's turned into something more like "I want to go to _____ so I can get ready for Yale." Yale is still my dream, and I know I can make it there someday if I have enough time... but how do I have enough time?

There are two ways that this year can end. I graduate, and get into Yale (or have reason to believe that I could be there very soon), or I graduate and don't get into Yale (or have reason to believe I couldn't be there very soon). Either way, I think I want to take a year off in between college and grad school. My arms are getting better every day, but I'm going to need to be playing way more per day than I am now. I'm just about caught up to what I consider to be the "Peabody average", or the amount of time you need to practice to stay on track here, but I know Yale will add a good 2-3 hours at least to whatever that is. A year off would give me a lot of time to prepare for the physical demands grad school will have.

If I get in to Yale this year (or if Bob recommends I wait until next year to audition), I'll spend my year off in Connecticut. Before school starts, I'd want to try to find work and be able to start building/rebuilding all of the Connecticut connections that I could have. That means playing jazz gigs again, trying to work more closely with the school systems, possibly doing the ARC program (Alternate Route to Certification) and becoming certified to teach, continuing to try to build a teaching reputation around the town and getting a steady job--music related or not. Of course, I'll be practicing throughout all of this, possibly even getting lessons from whoever I can...but without the stress of the regular playing commitments being in college presents.

If I do not get into Yale (or Bob recommends that I don't audition), I just began seriously considering doing my (first!) masters at the University of Miami in jazz vibraphone. Svet Stoyanov, who taught me for two years at Peabody, just started his job as the professor of percussion down there--in my last conversation with him, he remarked about how serious the jazz program seemed. The more I think about it, this could be a great opportunity to really polish my jazz chops and re-identify with that part of my musical personality--but still keep my classical chops in place by taking lessons with Svet. Plus, who could say no to two years in Miami? If that all goes well, I could audition for Yale after those two years and possibly be in even better shape for the audition than I would be otherwise. If I go down this track, I'd want to spend my year off in Baltimore--I've got so much work lined up here, as well as a great apartment, it would be silly to leave it and start the job search all over again in Connecticut. I'll also have more flexibility to go home more often throughout the year.

Of course, this could all backfire in my face, and I could end up at Yale next year. Or I could end up with a real job next year. Or I could end up in another country for whatever reason next year. Maybe I'll go to school for composition. Maybe the band I just joined will make it big and I'll be a rock star. Maybe I'll develop telekinesis. Who knows.

Busy weekends!

It's funny, seems like the weekend is the busiest time of the week for me! I guess if I had to choose between a two day work week versus a five day work week, my decision would be pretty obvious.

Haven't really played since the So Percussion incident, with the exception of a few triangle notes in PSO (for our concert tonight!) Worked until about 4 or so, went to the library to check out some scores, and started going through Strauss' Burleske in D minor with the recording and my part. I figure if I can't play right now, I better be able to understand this music inside and out.

I'm pretty worried about how I'm going to keep up this year. I'm probably playing Village Burial in December, I have a recital in February (well, technically in November but I highly doubt it's going to be ready by then... I'm probably going to take an incomplete), an audition for Yale in March or April, and between then and now I just want to get really good. However, I feel like I can't keep up with everything. I definitely couldn't afford to take this break, I'm barely keeping up with my VB part (thank god for the chanting sections), I haven't found half of my setup for ...And Points North (theater piece by Stuart Saunders Smith), I haven't played marimba in like a week, and I've only finished one page of Omar (vibraphone piece by Franco Donatoni) when I'm supposed to have the notes to the first movement learned by the time Bob gets back. On top of that, I've got a whole slew of snare drum stuff that I need to learn for David Skidmore (Bob's teaching assistant), and four major orchestral works on timpani. Personally, snare drum is the most important to me right now, because it's my weakest discipline. However, academically, everything else is more important! Argh.

My right arm is feeling a lot better since Thursday. I went to therapy Friday morning (which helped a lot) and have been resting it since then, so hopefully I can start using it again soon. It still feels weak (which is strange, I'm not used to my left arm feeling stronger than my right), but I think I'll be back into playing soon. Just gotta stay smart!