Just thought I would post a piece I've been working on for quite a while here, now that I have a good recording of it. This is my first round entry for the Case Concerto Competition. You'll be happy to know that fate was on my side: the night before recording this, I was at volleyball practice and did quite a number on my left index finger. Luckily, by 8 am the next morning, the only twinge of pain was barely noticeable.
It feels like a mix between spring and fall here now, plus we got three minutes of sleet this afternoon. It's very confusing. On the one hand, I want to go play softball, but on the other, the feeling of despair for the world outside my dorm room is still lingering. Still: it's warming up THANK GOD. Some more good things happening include 1) a student club fundraising in Nord by selling Krispy Kreme, 2) John Mackey coming to coach the band through Kingfishers Catch Fire, and 3) my SAGES teacher converting an essay assignment to a creative project.
1) A fantastic taste of home. I just wish they would continue to sell them next week when I get my Astronomy test back.
2) Composers are perfect directors. They know the music backwards and forwards, know exactly what they want, and can advise on anything from the mood to how fast the trill should be in measure 5 to how to articulate that quarter note in measure 105. Mr. Mackey also confirmed what I have long suspected: even composers think of a legato over a staccato as "wishy-washy."
3) I still have to write, but now it can be a justification for what our flute duet has to do with the course material, not a formal film review!
I also wanted to recommend a book to the world:
Everyone should read King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild. If you've read Heart of Darkness before, you have a good idea of what the book entails, but you might not realize how very real the brutality in the Congo during Europe's colonial era was. It's a story on a scale you'll likely never have read before, with both awe-inspiring heroism and exploitation. There's also quite a bit of intrigue; the movement that eventually put an end to the violence was an investigative journalism endeavor of epic proportions, driven by one man, who had to politically outmaneuver kings and out print corrupt fellow journalists.
