November 9, 2014

As promised, lots of exciting stuff happened this week, and I have plenty of pictures and stories.

After morning classes on Monday, Adam and I made our first field trip out to Berkeley for Philharmonia Baroque. They have a new program called "Side-by-Side" in which they allow baroque students to play with them in their educational shows (they don't trust us enough for the real concerts). We rode BART to East Bay and arrived ridiculously early - we had grossly overestimated the time it would take to get there (or maybe we were both just eager to get out of school). So we bought some lunch at Trader Joe's, found a few caches and enjoyed a glorious walk up to Claremont and St Clement's Church where the rehearsal was. We sat on the curb in the shining afternoon and Adam tested me on music history and showed me how to do first- and second-species counterpoint.

Yay field trips!!

The piece in which we were Side-by-Side-ing was Brandenburg 1, which has a solo part for piccolo violin. This is why it isn't performed very often. The concertmaster had a piccolo violin on loan and showed it to me. It is about the size of a 3/4 or 1/2 violin, and is tuned a minor third above a normal violin. I inquired if it was possible to play the solo part on a full-size violin. Response: "No, because the chords don't work. Someone tried to play it with us on a regular violin once, and it sounded terrible!!"

I was really excited to play with the professional Baroque-ers. Several of our teachers from SFCM are in the orchestra, and I was allowed to sit with one of them in the second desk. This was highly enjoyable because she had plenty to say about everything we did and told me lots of interesting tidbits. (I've noticed that old people, whether or not they are musicians, tend to have very strong opinions about many different things. I mostly enjoy listening to them pontificate their deeply held views.) Professional musicians make so many snarky comments and pull so many hilarious stunts, especially brass players and certain volatile violinists.

On Tuesday was another rehearsal and a morning commute to Berkeley. I had a competition later that afternoon, so I stuck around when Adam went back to SF. I went on a little caching expedition and saw lots of beautiful houses and a huge and gruesome Halloween decoration involving a person being impaled on a computer keyboard. The Philharmonia people let me use one of the rooms upstairs to practice before I had to journey to Albany for the competition. Here I am going to take a moment to say that I very much enjoy hanging out in churches of any denomination, especially when you've got an orchestra set-up in the hall and musicians dotting the grounds. Church buildings tend not to be high-security (no electronic locks, no cameras, mechanical windows without screens that you can actually push open and feel the breeze) and really lend themselves to small explores. They also tend to be quiet and peaceful inside, very conducive to music making and to thoughts.

So many fruit trees I can't identify...

Seriously what IS this thing???

Gingko biloba?

Claremont Hotel

Something I found instead of a cache

GINORMOUS roses!!

I journeyed into the heart of downtown Berkeley, passed the monstrous UCBerkeley campus (what a nightmare) and made my way out to Albany and another little church for the competition. After I had played I decided to walk back to the BART station, because the bus costs $2.10, and they don't give transfers. It took me about an hour to haul my backpack and 2 violins to the downtown station, but it was worth it because I got in a nice walk as the sun was going down.

Saw this on  my walk and found the drawing funny.

Wednesday morning was the first of the two school shows. We took the CalTrain (which should probably be renamed the Peninsula Train because it certainly doesn't cover all of CA) down to Palo Alto and performed at a big high school. Please note that the CalTrain has a strange schedule and not all trains stop at all stations. So when Adam and I were waiting at our station there were several trains that went by without stopping. Adam began waving to the trains and running after them with outstretched arms and a distressed expression. I found this hysterically funny and we both laughed til our stomachs hurt. "I hope I made someone's day..."

I found this funny

Wow...

WOW!!

der Mond

WUT

Wednesday night was spent frantically cramming for the music history exam on Thursday morning. I was studying at school with M. Before we left for the night we illustrated a little play on words.

Friday morning was the second school show in the Inner Sunset. I left early because I wanted to find some caches and also the old Conservatory. SFCM moved to Oak Street in 2006, but for many years before that they were in a building on Ortega. Ian, Paul, Dr Hohmann and all the rest knew this building well, and I wanted to see it for myself. I can just imagine all the music and life that went on there.

Ta-Dah!!

What it is now

This would have been nice.

These are not Halloween decorations!

Poor little guy.

Before the show I saw my stand partner sitting backstage and asked her what she was working on. She told me that she was having to change a concert program, because the "fancy guest artist" wanted to play the same piece SHE was going to play, so now she had to change her piece. She referred to it as "GAFOOT syndrome" - Great Artist From Out Of Town. I thought that was just too freakin' funny!

Went on a few expeditions after the madness had ended.

It's a bass.

Hope this post makes up for the short one last week.

- Antisocial Violinist