Epic Win!

Last night, both Worthington Kilbourne's Symphonic Band and Wind Ensemble got 1's at district contest. I don't know about Symphonic, but Wind got straight 1's. Is that epic, or is that epic? So, I must say I'm in a pretty good mood right now. Good job to everyone, way to pwn that music!

It was also my last performance with Wind Ensemble. I'll be playing with them until this Walkabout's over, but there aren't any concerts between now and then. Well, if I had to choose a way to go out, it would be with last night's concert. I had several solos, but they were mostly really duets. I think I like that better in real life. I mean, I love solos and it's exciting to be the center of attention, but it's more fun getting to share that feeling. I think it increases that special tension you get beforehand, because the two of you are kind of holding each other up, and it makes the success more exciting—because it's also shared.

I do wonder what band will be like now that I'm not working on music I'll be performing with them anymore. I know this was frustrating for the Walkabout students who have already left when they did it, but… well we'll see what happens. All I want to do is play.

Really Beautiful

So if you're a musician, or if you're anyone really, but especially a musician, go read David Thomas's post at The Buzzing Reed now called "The Value of Music." It's a speech given by Karl Paulnack as a welcome to new freshmen at the Boston Convservatory. I might have cried, but I'm not telling. Just do it.

Auditions

So here's the deal: today's walkabout journal was wimpy at best, but I've been meaning to write about auditions. I wrote previously about my first audition and haven’t said anything about them since. So now I will write a review of the experience as a whole so that you can experience it too! I know, auditions really aren’t anybody’s favorite thing to do so you would think living vicariously through me would be rather unpleasant in this situation. But I promise not to get too gruesome. ;)

So you know about my awesome experience at Butler. That Monday, I traipsed over to Bowling Green, and on Friday I went to Pittsburg to audition at Duquesne. Both at Duquesne and Bowling Green, only the oboe faculty listened to me. At BGSU that’s only one person and in many ways it felt like my least formal audition. For one thing, I didn’t go on an audition day, so there weren’t a hundred nervous high school seniors all around me. It was the only place I only had one person listening to me, too. After I played she gave me a suggestion or two, and we talked about Bowling Green while she readjusted my oboe. That last part was pretty awesome. At Duquesne, I met a girl named Kirby who auditioned right after me. I found out that not only would she audition at Baldwin-Wallace and Oberlin as well, but that we would be auditioning at both on the same day again. Sure enough, we met at both schools. I wonder if we’ll play together next year.

Over the course of the next month, I was excepted by the department or school of all three of those schools—within two days of each other, if I remember correctly. Each has offered me an academic scholarship and Butler has offered me a talent scholarship already. I’ll be interested to see if the other two send me any such awards. I get the impression that’s generally decided in March, so I guess I’d be hearing about that soon? I haven’t been so much as accepted into the colleges of Case or Baldwin-Wallace, and I didn’t even apply to Oberlin’s college: just the conservatory. So I know I won’t get an academic scholarship from Oberlin. I can’t say I’m expecting a talent scholarship from them either, but more on that in a minute.

On February 20 and 21, I auditioned at Case and Baldwin-Wallace respectively. Butler was the only place where I could sense the enthusiasm of my audience, although at Case I’m fairly certain I won over the band director. There, I was heard by the oboe professor, the orchestra director and the band director. At B-W, I was heard by the woodwind faculty, and at Oberlin I was heard by the oboe faculty. I met Case’s oboe teacher for the first time at my audition, which really isn’t a great time to do that. I’m not sure what my impression of her is; it’s too skewed by nerves. I’m not sure what her impression of me was either. That was another good thing about meeting the teachers before hand; you already know the kinds of things they think are important and in some cases they’ve even told you that they would like to have you as a student. That’s always really reassuring to think back on, let me tell you.

Oberlin. It’s an impressively competitive college, but it’s a ridiculously competitive conservatory. And Alex Klein, who teaches oboe there, is practically hailed as a god by some oboists. Over at Obohemia, they almost hyperventilated from excitement when Alex Klein agreed to do a master class at Laurier. So I just waltzed into Oberlin and played for Alex Klein and Robert Walters. (OK, I didn’t exactly “waltz in,” there was a $100 application fee, along with a pretty hard core application. PS, Robert Walters isn’t exactly a name to be sneezed at either. He plays English horn for the Cleveland Orchestra, after all.)

For a while now, I’ve been reading blogs that tend to be dismissive of conservatories like Oberlin, complaining about this that and the other that’s approached wrong, and at once I’ve gained enough awe of the place to add up to the feeling that I probably would not get in, certainly wouldn’t get a penny from them (in scholarships), and would possibly be better off anyway. On Friday night before my audition, I met some of their studio and heard an oboist’s junior recital. It opened some door in my mind: “wouldn’t it be f***ing awesome to go here?” I really believe that feeling now, more than I did when I applied or even when I visited at first.

And I have to say, my audition went really well. For all that I had gotten in touch with a real desire to get in, I didn’t approach it the same as the other auditions. I was just excited to be there really, and excited to be playing for the people who were listening to me. I already had some acceptance letters to back me up and remind me of my worth, and I went at the ordeal with no purpose but to make music. That’s what it’s really about, you know? So who knows, I may yet get an acceptance letter from Oberlin. Cross your fingers for me?

I Know The Staff

This [Wednesday] was the second time hot chocolate changed the course of my Wednesday. Thank God for chocolate. Otherwise, life without band would drive me to insane, and I’d really rather walk. It’s better for the environment, you see. Already the morning has become something of a blur. Seems like I did a few wrap up things for yesterday’s meeting.

I’ve been thinking about my relationships with people in the office besides Julia. For a long time, I basically just went to her for everything whether that made sense or not. For example, at the beginning of February, ProMusica hadn’t gotten our parking passes for the month. (Remember? I think I wrote about that) I always went to Julia on the subject of parking, even though it was Joe who would have either had a pass for me or access to some cash to give me to feed the box. I remember feeling particular awkwardness towards Joe for some reason, no idea why. I think maybe that would have been the case regardless of who worked at the front desk or something. In any case, on Monday I just asked Joe for a parking pass. I mentioned being teased yesterday for breaking the printer (I swear I didn’t! J ) and some similar silliness ensued when he left me in the office alone for a few minutes today. (I know Julia was on a school visit, not sure about everyone else.)

Then there’s Ashley, for whom I’ve now done some work, and she’s just really friendly and funny. Any digressions in staff meetings are probably her fault. She’s done a lot to make me feel comfortable here, though really. And I just found out today that she and Arianne just started working at ProMusica in November. I guess I had sort of known they were new—at my first staff meeting one of the things they talked about was how to make their voicemail boxes say their names—but until today I hadn’t really known by how much. For all I could tell, Julia and Ashley might have known each other forever. I have heard the names of a few other marketing directors, in fact there was this one time when someone asked for Madeline—apparently Ashley’s predecessor—and the call got transferred to me. I don’t think I wrote about it at the time. It was confusing for a minute.

I still don’t really feel like I know Arianne and Janet particularly. Yvette only comes in once a week or so, and I’ve barely said two words to her. Tom (I’ve only mentioned him once and by the wrong name. He is the librarian and contractor for the musicians, I’m pretty sure) comes in now and again and we always see each other then because I’m using his computer. Arianne seems like an incredibly nice person. I know that’s about the vaguest personality word ever, but it fits. She’s always smiling, and she always greets me and everything, but she isn’t as bubbly as Ashley is. There was one day that she brought yellow roses for everyone in the office. It made me happy. Janet would be intimidating, being the executive director, except that she just isn’t. That doesn’t mean that she is whatever the opposite of intimidating would be, but she’s the kind of person who can put you at ease. I guess that’s a good quality for someone in her position, you know? So that’s about everyone, at least the ones who are around regularly. There’s Tim too, (music director) but since he lives in Arizona it’s not as if I ever see him. I will on Friday though. As I recall, the operations meeting last month was the first thing that made me really happy about this walkabout, so I’m really looking forward to the one on Friday.

Ode to PMCO's Copy Machine

Today [Tuesday] was the day of the Student Advisory Board meeting, so that’s what I spent most of the day preparing for. I made sure I had a spreadsheet of all the contacts people had made asking for money, including my own and I basically figured out the value of the donations and thought about what I’d say. I also cleaned up all the extra versions of the same original spreadsheet of contacts I made that have been floating around the system for a while. I don’t know how that happened but it has been confusing trying to figure out what is up to date. But the extra ones are all deleted now, I think. I also printed out posters a SAB-er made for the gala to advertise, as well as a bunch of flyers. Tickets go on sale tonight, and now we get to promote it. I’m going to take a couple posters to Linworth at seminar tomorrow night, I guess.

So I suppose that it’s time for the long overdue “copy machine rant.” Not that I’ve really had anything to rant about before now, and not that this necessarily add up to much either, but I recall when I came in for my interview at ProMusica Jen mentioned that most students end up writing, among other things, a journal dedicated to the copy machine. I thought of that today when we were playing with it. So, I hereby dedicate this blog post to ProMusica’s copy machine/printer (It’s two in one!). No Joe (ticketing), I did not break it (as you accused).

Printing off all the flyers and posters was indeed a bit of a feat. I started with the flyers. The flyers were meant to be half a page, but we couldn’t make two print on one page through the computer. Instead, I had to copy two together in the copy machine to make them print on one page. I did this sideways the first time, and then I had trouble making it scan again. I wasted some paper. Then, after printing twenty of them, I looked at the notes I had taken and realized that not only did I want ten more, but I was supposed to have printed them on colored paper.
The shelf from which I would acquire colored paper is a bit of a mess. When I’ve been told to find anything from it before, I often spend a long to trying to find it, pick up the wrong thing anyway, and discover that what I was looking for was in fact right in front of me. So I needed to find 8 ½ x 11 pretty colored paper. It didn’t matter what color. I eventually chose yellow. It was thick cardstock, but I didn’t know whether there were any other choices, so I loaded it into the copy machine and told it to print 15 copies.

Well I guess I didn’t close the tray all the way, because the copier decided to print the flyers from the second tray instead—letterhead. So I wasted some more paper. I got the paper load properly and started again. I think that’s when Joe accused me of making a mess and breaking the printer. I was quite sure I had not yet succeeded in the latter, however. Indeed, I managed to print fifteen copies of the flyers on yellow paper. When I checked the tray though, I didn’t think there was enough paper for the other fifteen, so I went to get more yellow paper. I realized, when I got back, that even though I had found the same color, this was normal paper, not cardstock. I decided I didn’t care. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be using and was pretty sure I wouldn’t find the cardstock again. So I shoved more paper in the tray and printed the rest of the fliers.

The real fun, however, came when I wanted to print the poster. I could not find the right size of paper. Sure enough, when I decided on the one large loose leaf of paper that I saw to show Julia, it was the wrong size. There were, it turned out, maybe four sheets of 11 x 17 sheets of paper on the shelf. (That’s what I was looking for.) The rest were in the room I’ve been working in, in the filing cabinet right by my desk… not that I’d have any reason to know that, and Julia hadn’t thought of it until I asked. I decided to just ask Julia to figure out how to make the computer print the posters. I saw, when I asked it to print, that it was trying to format the picture as if it would print on normal paper, but that’s not what we wanted. Julia played with that for a while, and then decided to do it from her computer when it didn’t print right. We had to try that a few times too, but we finally got it and they’re really very cool. So that’s my fun printer story. I’m sure it was very exciting. It’s funny though, I noticed on Sunday when I was subbing as a teacher aid at my synagogue, that ProMusica has a nicer copy machine. What’s more, if I had wanted to do anything besides just make a regular copy, like if I’d wanted to copy several pages or make something front and back, I wouldn’t have known how—but I would at ProMusica! Not that it mattered; I just needed fifteen copies of one coloring sheet so I was set. Still, it actually kind of bothered me because I was fairly certain that those commands did exist on Beth Tikvah’s copier, I just didn’t know how to find them.

Things Are Looking Up

Yesterday [Monday] was a pretty good day. I found it funny; in seminar we were discussing grunt work and after I talked, Liz said that she knew sometimes at non-profits they do a mailing and have an envelope stuffing day. Even though I could completely envision it, it had never exactly happened… until yesterday. I think actually this will take up more than one day, but we only spent maybe two hours on it yesterday (as opposed to the entire day). Joe needed to finish preparing the second batch. So, after stuffing envelopes, I got to un-stuff programs. We used the same little envelopes to mail back donations to stuff the programs as we put in the mailings, so I was given a box of old programs that hadn’t gotten distributed and took all the little envelopes out. I’m not sure how long that took.

It’s funny, and I observed this before when stuffing programs, but I really didn’t mind the work at all and even kind of enjoyed it. The big pile of tedious work shouldn’t have looked any different from the one giant spreadsheet of contacts I had to compile for Julia, but when I did that I had to fight back a feeling of futility, a feeling that I would never, ever finish. I think this was just as monotonous and time consuming, but somehow it didn’t feel that way. I don’t really know why.

There was a staff meeting today, and I realized that I was really looking forward to it. I think this is the first time I actually legitimately took good notes too. Previously, I was never really sure what to write and grew self-conscious about it, but I guess I’ve gotten a better feel of what actually applies to me and what I’ll probably be involved with later. Things disintegrated into strangeness at the end. Janet warned Ashley that she would corrupt me, which was funny. I thought of a few years ago when I first began to spend time in the back hallway and the kinds of conversation inspired by Liam, Sean and Alisha. Stranger things have reached my ears. It’s funny, for a while conversation had become almost pristine, revolving almost always around school and band. The last couple times I’ve wandered back there, however, the freshmen were not discussing such wholesome topics. I was kind of amused, to be honest. Things cycle back around, I guess.

Yesterday, I used Facebook at ProMusica—but for a noble purpose! Julia had me upload some pictures to the computer, and then she asked be to post a few in the Creative Hybrids group on Facebook. I did almost feel bad though, because the super slow computer I use most of the time just couldn’t deal with Facebook. (It’s moments like these that make me wish they had never changed their layout—it didn’t use to take up so much computer space) So I had to used Yvette’s computer, which is newer and faster, but it’s also a PC and thus (apparently) more likely to get messed up by cookies. When I started to type in the URL though, I saw that it had already been accessed on that computer so I didn’t feel as bad anymore. There’s no way the mac could have gotten those pictures uploaded. It would have just frozen or given up or something.

Pretend Last Week Didn't Happen

If you do, then my blog will soon be up to date. :)