First off, a quick summary of the last few weeks:
I played with two orchestras for Young Euro Classics, an annual festival here in Berlin.
First Orchestra: “Young Sound Forum Middle Europe”. Tour of Poland and and bit of the Czech Republic, with the final concert in Berlin. All in all quite good, good players, new friends. Guest conductor Penderecki: an asshole at the podium, can’t conduct worth a damn, but wrote a cool violin concerto. The real composer of the group, Christoph Altstaedt, is absolutely fantastic. Only 26 and already a great leader. I sure wish he conducted the whole concert!
Second Orchestra: “China meets Europe”. Half Sound Forum plus half Shanghai Conservatory Orchestra. Tedious rehearsals in Berlin, literature only mildly interesting, and not a very high level of performance as a group. The chinese were not very social, but their conductor, Mr. Tang, rocked!
Following those exhausting two weeks I had one week break to prepare for my next project with Ensemble Mosaik which started today. A word to the wise for composers who haven’t realized it yet: please give your players their *finished* parts atleast a week in advance. Most of our rehearsal today was spent with decifering the parts. Time changes were missing, dots, rests, fermatas, complete stanza as well as pages were just missing. “What note is that in measure 67?” “How many beats are in measure 105? “Where IS measure 105?” So much time and concentration wasted! But for that it should be a cool project. It’s the continuation of an opera written last year about a space ship captain, Kommander Kobayashi, and his adventures. The first part was written by five different composers, this one by only two. The different styles are clear which makes the project even more interesting. We’ll be performing in Berlin, Luxembourg, and Warsaw. I’m excited to travel again, Warsaw will be completely new to me.
This project as well as the Volksbühne show will slide me into my *LAST SEMESTER OF SCHOOL*!!!! It’s going to be crazy busy, but I can’t wait to dig in!
