Second Lesson / Mock Audition

Another crazy day. This morning I had another private lesson with Mark at 9am. The bus got to the complex right at 9, so I didn't have any time to warm-up. We worked on the last two movements of the Eccles sonata - he had so many great comments and ideas! I'm looking forward to incorporating some of them into my interpretation of the piece. I'm not sure how well the new bow grip is working out - we didn't talk about it, but I think I'll ask him tomorrow. After my lesson I practiced until lunch for our mock audition. Mark decided what excerpts he wanted us to prepare yesterday, and only one of them was one that I had prepared!! I have played all the others before, but most of them not since orchestra rep class at Michigan several years ago. So, this morning I was frantically trying to refresh my memory!

Lunch was good - we had chile. I've been pleasantly surprised at how good the food is here - I was expecting much worse. I've been eating about twice as much as I do when I'm at home - I think it's because I'm expending so much more mental and physical energy than usual. My arms, hands and shoulders are getting really stiff from all the playing - I need to stretch more before I start playing in the morning. After lunch I took a walk to the ocean - see picture below.

After lunch was symphony orchestra rehearsal - I got someone to take pictures of us rehearsing. After dinner was the mock audition. There are six bass players - three of us played a pretend audition of our excerpts and a solo while the other three and Mark listened. They gave us our comments and then we switched - they played and we listened and gave comments. There was a screen (a wall between the listeners and the person playing), which is standard in professional orchestra auditions (it helps to prevent discrimination/favoritism). I think I played pretty well considering that I put in a total of 2 hours of preparation on all but one excerpt. Everyone else sounded really good though - it's going to be difficult to hold on to my principal position for the Mahler concert next week, I think. We have our seating audition for that concert on Monday. I haven't really been practicing the Mahler yet, either!! I need to look at it this weekend.