Lots of bass!

Today seemed really long - I haven't played this much in awhile! I got up around 7:30 and walked over to breakfast in my PJs. I had a chocolate muffin with chocolate chips - yessss! Then they chauffeured my bass to The Complex - where the concerts, lessons, sectionals and auditions will be. Then I hopped on the bus with the rest of the low strings for our seating audition. We met Mark Morton, the bass teacher, and he told us what we were playing on the audition and gave us 45 minutes to warm-up. He gave us six excerpts from Shastakovich 10 and asked us to play a solo. Fortunately I'd prepared the Shostakovich pretty well - I knew all the excerpts that he asked for. I didn't really have a good solo to play though - you usually would want to play either a concerto or a movement from a Bach cello suite. All that I've really been working on is the Eccles Sonata, so I played that. I think that my audition went well- he had very positive comments for me after. He liked that when he asked me to play something again differently (more off-the-string, more flautando, etc.) that I could actually do it. Two bass players are arriving late to the festival, so they won't audition until tomorrow and we won't hear about our seating assignments until then. After the audition Mark and the four other bass players went out for coffee and he told us about his recent tour to Europe with a chamber orchestra. Here is a picture of us returning to The Complex from coffee - me, Mark, and Kate. The ocean and mountains on Vancouver Island in the background. Then we had lunch - it's great being fed by the orchestra and not having to spend any more money! It was actually good food, too. Then we had our first rehearsal. It was 3 hours and 15 minutes long!! We played through our entire first concert and rehearsed a bunch of stuff, too. The orchestra sounds pretty good - I'm looking forward to seeing how much we improve over the next few days. Dinner after rehearsal, and then bus back here! Here is everyone waiting outside The Complex waiting for the bus back to the academy after dinner. I'm exhausted, I don't think that I'm going to do anything else tonight. This is a picture of the hall where we'll have our concerts.













Whale Watch, Day 4:

• I saw a whale today - his name is Humphrey. Unfortunately, he is only visible in the infrared spectrum, so I couldn't take a picture of him. If I find another whale that reflects visible light, I'll let you know!
  

Things I forgot/didn't think of to bring:

• Bass quartet music!