making music is the way my soul sings...

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

The Crazy Month of May!

This has been such a crazy month! I honestly don't remember the last time I've been so busy!
I feel so blessed to have had so many amazing opportunities lately, so I thought I would take a moment to share them with you.
At the end of April I was asked to lead the second violin section of the Dallas Chamber Symphony in their season finale.  The concert which took place in the new City Performance Hall included Beethoven's Coriolan Overture, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Brahms Symphony No. 4.  It was a wonderful concert and I got to perform with a few friends I hadn't seen in years as well as a bunch of new friends!

Later that week I played with the Dallas Symphony 2nd violin section for a very amusing family concert featuring Barbie!! We played a bunch of selections from Barbie's movies that actually feature many classical pieces such as The Nutcracker, Swan Lake and Dvorak's New World Symphony, all while video played on a giant screen overhead.  The kids really enjoyed it!

Right after that concert I had to quickly head back to Houston to perform with Mercury Baroque! Correction, they now call themselves just Mercury as they have been expanding their repertoire to the classical period. Like for this concert - we performed Beethoven's Symphony No. 4 AND Beethoven's Symphony No. 5!! It was a lot of fun to play on gut strings again and to work with all of the members of Mercury! We performed two concerts, one on the HBU campus in Clear Lake, and the other in downtown Houston in the Wortham Center. They were a huge success!
The day after our second performance I drove back to Dallas to perform at the Ritz Carlton downtown for an international wine club.  The club had decided to feature some of Robert Rodriguez's music so he asked me and 3 other wonderful musicians to perform a couple of his pieces. I played for two of the pieces, "Semi-Suite" and "Tango di Tango". "Semi-Suite" was a 5 movement work featuring the violin accompanied by piano, clarinet and percussion. "Tango di Tango" was a one movement Tango for piano, violin and accordion. They were both a lot of fun and the club loved our performance!
The following weekend I had a very exciting performance! I was asked to solo with my former youth orchestra, the New Conservatory of Dallas, and I got to perform John William's version of Carlos Gardel's Tango "Por Una Cabeza"!  My youth orchestra is only strings so Bruce Patti made a wonderful string arrangement of the piece which was the grand finale of the Spring Overture Concert.  The concert was GREAT and I had so much fun! It was a real treat to play with NCD :) The performance is on YouTube - you can check it out here

The next week I played with the Dallas Symphony in the 2nd violin section for their performances of Carmina Burana! I absolutely love that piece, if you haven't heard if you should definitely check it out! It was a really busy week - we had 5 rehearsals and 4 performances. The last 2 performances were both on Saturday! Jaap van Sweden was conducting this concert - it was such an amazing experience, he is so incredibly inspiring! It's always really exciting to perform with the Dallas Symphony Choir and Children's Choir - they are so great!

In between the two concerts on Saturday, my mom and I went to the mall and I found my dress for my performance of Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1 next week! It's black with roses and I think it's just stunning for the piece.
On Sunday, my mom had her student recital at the Pfamily Arts Center in Plano. She likes for me to perform something short at the end, so Kyle Orth and I played the Gardel Tango that John William's arranged for violin and piano. Kyle is one of my good friends and a truly incredible pianist! I'm always so happy to play with him :) Check out his website here!
Well, that about wraps up this month! I'd better get some rest for my photo shoot tomorrow, and then I need to get all of my students ready for their recital on Saturday before I drive to Missouri for some Shostakovich!! :D
Thanks for reading!

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