Hey I FINALLY found my cord to get my pics off my camera...woot becuase now I can post and not have to do the pics later.
So my audition went well. I left my hotel pretty early, around 8ish in the morning, so I could hopefully be there by 8:30 to start warming up. Needless to say....I got lost. So it was good that I left so early even though it is only a 10 minute walk from where I was staying. I had a map and everything too!! But I couldn't tell where I was based on the above view map. FYI: U of Washington is HUGE!! I'm not saying it's like a whole city, but really i've seen towns smaller than this place. I was looking at the spread of buildings on the map, and one quarter of this campus is about the size of Ball State. And Ball State is not that small. I don't know how big BYU is but I am going to guess UW is probably bigger. Anyway, I got lost and got pointed in the wrong direction by a supposed student and ended up walking down this long courtyard-type walk...until I figured out where I was. Which was here...which is not where I was supposed to be.
So I backtracked and found my way to the music building and the back dance studio entrance where I was supposed to come in. Walked down 4 flights of stairs and voila! there was the harp studio. So for about 20 minutes it was just me, then another harpist showed up (there were 3 of us that day, two for grad school and one for undergrad). Well, I was letting the new girl have a chance at playing the harp, when we both heard a loud POP. Ummm...whenever you here a pop on the harp it is not a good thing. It usually means a string has broke, which if you have replacement strings around is not a big deal...except it was one of the bass strings, which are not so fun to replace. Technically the string is steel wrapped silk, and is pretty thick, and to get it off requires heavy duty wire cutters. Which of course we couldn't find in the studio. But we found the replacement wire and managed to get it off without scratching the wood at the bottom (aka we pulled the whole thing out through the bottom instead of cutting it at the bottom, which you usually do becuase the top is all loopy and hard to pull through the eyelet at the bottom...I don't know why i'm explaining becuase you still probably don't know what I'm talking about if you don't play harp). Anyway, we managed to get it replaced before Ms. Lehwalder came back in. Anyway, I was the last to audition out of the 3 of us. It went pretty well, but not as well as I would have hoped. I only got to play a small portion of my Scintillation piece...bummer. After lunch I met up with her and had a lesson. She was really good, but super intense about how to play. She did this thing that she said Salzedo always did, which was swooping downward to grab the strings. It was actually quite hard, but she claimed that was how she got rid of a lot of buzzing. Also, she thought I played too high with my left hand, that is should be halfway between the sound board and the middle. But we worked on sections of Scintillation and she had some great musical insights, which I have used and have really helped.
So I backtracked and found my way to the music building and the back dance studio entrance where I was supposed to come in. Walked down 4 flights of stairs and voila! there was the harp studio. So for about 20 minutes it was just me, then another harpist showed up (there were 3 of us that day, two for grad school and one for undergrad). Well, I was letting the new girl have a chance at playing the harp, when we both heard a loud POP. Ummm...whenever you here a pop on the harp it is not a good thing. It usually means a string has broke, which if you have replacement strings around is not a big deal...except it was one of the bass strings, which are not so fun to replace. Technically the string is steel wrapped silk, and is pretty thick, and to get it off requires heavy duty wire cutters. Which of course we couldn't find in the studio. But we found the replacement wire and managed to get it off without scratching the wood at the bottom (aka we pulled the whole thing out through the bottom instead of cutting it at the bottom, which you usually do becuase the top is all loopy and hard to pull through the eyelet at the bottom...I don't know why i'm explaining becuase you still probably don't know what I'm talking about if you don't play harp). Anyway, we managed to get it replaced before Ms. Lehwalder came back in. Anyway, I was the last to audition out of the 3 of us. It went pretty well, but not as well as I would have hoped. I only got to play a small portion of my Scintillation piece...bummer. After lunch I met up with her and had a lesson. She was really good, but super intense about how to play. She did this thing that she said Salzedo always did, which was swooping downward to grab the strings. It was actually quite hard, but she claimed that was how she got rid of a lot of buzzing. Also, she thought I played too high with my left hand, that is should be halfway between the sound board and the middle. But we worked on sections of Scintillation and she had some great musical insights, which I have used and have really helped. So after my audition we bid farewell and I went back to my room. I then decided to go walking. I didn't want to go out into the city alone, becuase it was going to get dark within the next hour or so. So intead I just walked along one of the busy shop and resaurant streets along the edge of campus. There were so many asian places to eat! I saw 4 Thai restaurants (one of them I stopped for lunch), several chinese shops, a couple japanese and Korean, and several Indian places as well. This actually didn't surprise me as much becuase of how many asian students I saw...I think caucasians are a minority there. Which is fine with me because I feel part asian anyway, what with several asian roommates, a love for thier food, a Thai sister, and I'm overall fascinated by asian culture. And Asian instruments are some of my favorite too. I felt at home.
The campus was beautiful...the architecture is very castley-like (is that a word?) and many buildings where very old. I didn't have time to take a tour, but the part I saw was awsome.
A really nice street lined with trees...too bad it wasn't summertime.
This is the staircase in the library...wow!!!
This is the view outside my hotel window...and they say the sun doesn't shine in Seattle.
Well, the next morning I got back on my shuttle to the airport...off the Chicago then!!
1 comment:
That is awesome!! i wish I could have seen the guy playing his cello for money on the corner. The staircase in the library looks awesome!!! so when do you have to make up your mind? I bet Seattle is so pretty in the spring with all those trees.
Post a Comment