Texas Music Festival Week 1
Greetings from Houston!
To kick off my musical adventures this summer, I accepted a fellowship at the University of Houston for the 34th annual Texas Music Festival (TMF). This festival hosts ~90 instrumentalists from around the world. Young artists come together and spend three intense weeks creating music.
This first week was intense and busy. We hit the ground running with seating placement auditions, chamber rehearsals, practice time, sectionals, and orchestra rehearsals! While yes I was working 14 hour days and trekking 7 miles across campus, it has been a wonderful first week. Here are some of the highlights!
Coming to a fellowship being the only person from your state and your school can be terrifying. Traveling on my own is definitely not one of my strong suits. I was worried about way too many things and overthinking everything. Once I walked into the music building for the first meeting, I knew I was among friends. Everyone here is so nice and kind and LOVES music! These are my people!
Since last Sunday, we have had 25 hours of orchestra rehearsal, 6 structure hours of chamber rehearsal, 2 concerts, 3 recording sessions, a concerto competition, faculty chamber recital, private lessons, and many hours of personal practice time.
Maestro Franz Anton Krager was our conductor for this concert. The week’s orchestra rep was Bruckner “Psalm 146”, Strauss “Burlesque” for solo piano and orchestra, and Stravinsky “Firebird”. The only piece I have played in this rep is the “Firebird”, the other pieces were new to me. This year is the 200th anniversary of Bruckner’s birth so we are performing a few of his works. Bruckner “Psalm 146” isn’t his most famous work, but it is very beautiful. A chorus of local Houston residents was specially formed to participate in this piece. We worked hard to get a professional recording done of this piece and hopefully I’ll be able to share it when it comes out! Piano virtuoso Vadym Kholodenko from Ukraine performed the “Burlesque” with the TMF orchestra. It is a fast paced, dramatic piece of music that is very technically impressive. This pianist was absolutely phenomenal.
My favorite concert we performed this week was at Jones Hall, home of the Houston Symphony. Here we performed as a part of the League of American Orchestras’ national convention. This building and hall was absolutely beautiful! The sound there was amazing! It makes me hope for a day when I can be a soloist on such a great stage performing with an amazing orchestra.
As far as chamber music is concerned, this week we were able to work with the Formosa Quartet! My chamber ensemble is putting together the Glauzanov Quintet movement one and three. It has been such an amazing adventure putting this together with my fellow musicians and I can’t wait to see how far we’ll get by our performance!
Also, I competed in the concerto competition here at TMF! I performed the Bruch violin concerto in G minor third movement. This competition was a fun experience, but unfortunately I did not progress to the finals. It is interesting how this experience went for me. I have been practicing this piece since the end of April and performed it on two recitals in May; so coming into this competition I was feeling prepared and ready to perform fantastically. My practice sessions were clean, energized, concise, crisp, and exactly what I was looking for. I rehearsed with one of the piano professors at UoH and it went basically perfect! I was so ready for the competition! A few hours later, I performed for the Formosa Quartet and it was almost as if I had never played this piece before! My fingers flailed all over the place and I missed runs, chords, and parts of the piece I hadn’t missed before! I was frustrated, but still felt like I gave it my best. I will have to explore this experience more to figure out why our rehearsals can be so good, but our performances fall flat.
This next week I am looking forward to a more relaxed schedule and brand new orchestra music! Stay tuned!
Caio!
