Well, it has been a busy, fun filled week! On Monday, I booked plane tickets and made various other reservations for spring break (September 18- October 3). Jamie and I are going to Alice Springs and Kings Canyon, Kata Tjuta (Olgas) and Uluru (Ayers Rock) for the first part of spring break and then I am going down to Tassie for about a week and a half. In other news, my Monday class (Historical Performance Class) opened another section on Tuesday mornings at the same time so now I have Mondays free instead of Tuesdays!
Our Tuesday adventure this week was a bit restricted by time, so instead of going to St. Kilda, Jamie and I wandered around the neighborhood by our apartment building and down around the Queen Victoria Market. We had a delicious lunch of Thai food at this little hole in the wall restaurant by the market and saw a whole bunch of interesting shops around the market that we hadn’t noticed before.
On Tuesday afternoons, the Early Music Studio has a masterclass series. This week Rachael Beesley, a baroque violinist who splits her time between Victoria and the Netherlands, led the class. I played Lord Massereen on the baroque violin I have borrowed for the semester. I think I am really going to enjoy this series of masterclasses. Next week is one focused on Baroque Dance.
On Wednesday in Baroque ensemble, we worked on some Uccellini Sinfonies that one of the recorder players is arranging. That night, I got to play with the Melbourne Colonial Dance Band at their monthly ‘live music’ dance. The dances are organized a bit differently than the contra dances at home. The dances are set weeks in advance and the musicians play music that goes specifically with each dance. In some cases, the tunes have been spliced together to get the correct number of bars of music for that specific dance. Because they dance a variety of dances including some Schottisches, Polkas, and Quadrilles there are more types of tunes available than just the jigs and reels used for most contra dances. I had a lot of fun playing and even got some good recordings on my little digital recorder of the band and the caller!
Thursday, I had Conducting. It is getting intense fast! Last week we just worked on some simple conducting patterns, but this week we have to look at the introductions to each movement of Beethoven Symphony No. 1 in C Major and Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale and figure out how to conduct them! Some pretty crazy things happen in those pieces. In Soldier’s Tale, the bass has constant eighth notes but the rest of the ensemble switches meters all the time. I hope everyone else in the class feels just as overwhelmed as I do! It should be fun though.
Friday evening, Alysha and I decided to go to St. Kilda. As we were walking between the two trams along Southbank, we stumbled across this Winter Festival. They had a tent with Poffertjes! Mmmmm so tasty. The kids working there spoke Dutch and were very nice – they gave us free tickets to go ice skating at the outdoor rink set up for the festival! So, thoroughly sidetracked from going to St. Kilda, we skated for a while and then they cleared the ice so some professional skaters could perform. It was so much fun! We continued our wanderings to the Crown complex. It houses a really nice hotel, restaurants, an entire mall, and a casino. We got some gelato and wandered around looking at everything.
Everyone I have met here is so nice. People keep driving me to dances and rehearsals and feeding me and driving me home again. On Saturday, I went out to Ringwood (about a half-hour outside the central part of the city) for a rehearsal with the Melbourne Colonial Dance Band. There were about eight fiddle players there and a hammer dulcimer player and a guitar player. After working through the set list for the dance that night, we took a break and had an incredible sit-down dinner. Everybody brought something and without any coordination we had two kinds of soup, a salad, some baked veggies, a roast chicken, several quiches, wine, and some fruit for dessert. It was so delicious. At the dance in Ringwood I think we had almost as many musicians on stage as we had dancers. It was a blast! We were joined, at the dance, by another fiddler or two and a guitar/banjo player.
Sunday I went back out to Ringwood for a rehearsal with Borderline Kaylee. This is a group of young musicians and dancers that performs at festivals as well as playing for dances etc. It was a great rehearsal - we played music, danced, had some “Australian meat pies” and danced and played music some more!
Today, there was a lot of sunshine. I didn’t have any class today so I didn’t do much. It was nice enough outside that I sat on the South Lawn on campus for a while and did some reading and I didn’t even need a sweater! Spring is almost here! Well, I’m off to dance again at The Quiet Man. Until next time.
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