On Sunday I went to the Melbourne Zoo with Alysha. It always makes me sad when I go to a zoo to see animals enclosed in such small, mostly synthetic spaces. I was hoping that this zoo would have a good collection of native Australian animals. It had a fair number but it also had a large number of animals from all over the world; your standard zoo fare of gorillas, orangutans, elephants, zebras, lions, bears, etc. I think my favorite animal out of the whole trip was the platypus. I don’t have any pictures of them, unfortunately, because you are not allowed to take pictures in their area because they are more or less nocturnal. I also really enjoyed seeing the different species of wombats. The Great Flight Aviary was one of my favorite exhibits. It had a lot of different birds representing the Australian rainforest, wetlands, and bushland including the Royal Spoonbill, Eclectus Parrot, Red-tailed Black Cockatoo, and Brolga (a type of crane).
Kangaroos are really lazy.
A Spoonbill!
A Red-tailed Black Cockatoo I believe.
Aren't they pretty?
Here are a few pictures of Melbourne Uni that I took this weekend:
The Old Arts building across South Lawn
The 1888 Building
Union House
One of the newer buildings on campus
The Botany building I believe.
My first day of class at the Uni went really well. I only had one class, Historical Performance Practice, from 9-11am. The class is about 20 students and has a good distribution of vocalists, pianists, and other instrumentalists. One of the things that I really liked from the lecture is that we talked about how Baroque musicians played almost exclusively “modern” music: the music of the moment. Today, many musicians tend to play music from the last hundred to two hundred years rather than music written within the last two, three, or even ten years.
We also talked about how modern players have a preoccupation with musical notation and do not tend to add their own musical ideas (as far as notes and ornamentation or improvisation) to the music. Not that there is anything wrong with music being played just exactly the same every time, but I feel like that is part of the reason that I get so frustrated with “classical” music sometimes. When every performance is slightly different, it also encourages audiences to come back and encourages performers to be creative and really understand the music that they are playing. I am not sure what to think about recordings of music. I think those have to be considered separately from live performance.
We talked about beat hierarchy as well; how music comes from movement and dance and how important it is when playing Baroque music to play with that in mind. For me, dance is really something that draws me to a lot of music; even vocal music. I appreciate music by moving, even if it is just my toes, but I much prefer dancing or clapping or joining in with my own voice or instrument. I feel like music really should be community based instead of purely art based.
To celebrate the first day of class, I went out to a nice Italian dinner with some friends on Lygon Street (the Italian district). We had a lovely time and stopped in at the pub next door to our apartments on the way home for a glass of their Monday night special of AU$1 champagne.
Since I have no classes on Tuesday, Jamie and I decided to take our luggage that had been damaged on the flight from Cairns to Melbourne over to the repair shop. Mine really wasn’t that broken, but they decided just to give me a new bag (the airline paid for the repairs). So I now have a brand new suitcase! I think that it is kind of funny that the airline will pay for a new suitcase but won’t have complimentary drinks on the flight.
After dropping the bag off back at home, we decided to go on an adventure to the Royal Botanic Gardens. The weather was actually very nice today and got up to about 60oF so we walked there and back. Since Jamie gets out of class at 11am and I never have class on Tuesdays, we have decided that we will take Tuesday Expeditions to a new part of the city each week. Next week we are planning on going to St. Kilda down by Port Phillip.
We started of with some very delicious sushi (AU$2.50 for a roll) to snack on in the Queen Victoria Gardens. Then we continued on to the King’s Domain and to see the Sidney Myer Music Bowl (an outdoor performance space opened in 1959). It seems like it has great acoustics and I hope that I get to see a performance there while I am here!
Royal Botanic Gardens were beautiful, quiet and free. I know that I have said this before, but I really like how much open space there is in Melbourne. There are plants there from all over the world. We wandered around there for probably around two hours and I would guess that we saw about a third of the whole garden. My conducting class on Thursdays is right near there so maybe once it gets a little warmer I will go study in the garden for a few hours before my class.
Some cactuses and aloes.
A monkey tree?
It is very swollen, that one.
A fuzzy looking tree.
The first meeting for the semester of the Mountaineering Club was tonight. They are doing a bunch of trips that I am not very interested in (skiing and rock climbing) over the next few weeks, but hopefully once it warms up a little there will be some more bushwalking (hiking and backpacking). One trip that I signed up for in late August sounds like a ton of fun: it is called Midnight Ascent. The club owns a hut at the top of a mountain (I don’t remember which one), so on Friday we drive over to the base and at midnight we start hiking up to the top. People generally reach the top in 3-6 hours and then either sleep or watch the sunrise. Sometimes there is a short hike or two that day and then that night everyone helps cook a three-course meal from scratch and dresses up in formal attire for dinner. Sounds like a great trip, huh?
No comments:
Post a Comment