Good afternoon everyone! It's about 4pm on Monday afternoon and I just wanted to update my blog and let you all know that I had a FANTASTIC weekend! The shows went really well (with yesterday night being one of the more exhilarating shows I've ever played!), I met lots of great people, the lessons went well, my students played at the recital and I got to hang out with my boyfriend a fair amount. It was a GREAT couple of days. I also had a 3 hour rehearsal this morning with an electric guitarist, a percussionist (my boyfriend) and myself on jazz violin. We are practicing blues music, be-bop, a little funk, jazz ballads and the like. It's really excellent for me to be branching out and learning to be a more diverse musician. My "main axe" if you will always and will always be, the violin. It's my love and it's my passion. I've been trained classically, and still do a ton of classical playing/gigs/teaching. But I really like learning to play other styles of music, and in 21st century America I believe that being a diverse musician is THE KEY to being sustainable long term as a musician. I very much want to make this work for the long term and I feel like I'm on my way. Being a musician is a blessing, but it's also scary and can be very unsteady. I've been "lucky" (I call it blessed!) to be able to have supported myself for the past three years entirely from and with the violin. And I want to keep that momentum going forward.
Today is turning into a busy day for me and I'm not sure if I'll have time to put up a "real" post. This is just a short update so that none of you think I fell off the face of the planet. I have so many things that must get done in the next hour and then I'm teaching two lessons tonight.
Thank you so much for all of your comments!
I really do love reading them and I try to respond as much and as quickly as a can. They really do mean so much to me, so keep 'em coming! :)
I hope you're all having as excellent of a day as I'm having! I'll post again as soon as I can and I promise that I have great pictures of great eats!
Aww, glad you had such a good weekend! I think you're completely right about being a diverse musician..it'll keep you marketable in the end, and also a lot of modern composers are requiring new technique in their writing. And even composers like Bernstein...we're doing Symphonic Dances from WSS, and there is a whole lot of jazz clarinet in there, which is definitely an area of weakness for me. I'm trying to learn to flutter tongue!
ReplyDeletethis is so refreshing and wonderful to read! i've pretty much always been surrounded by classical music elitists, so it's hard to come by this kind of enthusiasm. music really is amazing :) you are doing so fantastically with all your work - yes, you may have luck on your side, but your devotion and determination is the bulk of it!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great post, glad you had such a wonderful weekend! :)
ReplyDeleteYou ARE an amazing musician!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you had a fabulous weekend, you totally deserve it!
I'm glad you had a fantastic weekend. I am happy that you're happy :) Can't wait to see your eats!
ReplyDelete<3 jess
xoxo
Being a diverse musician is my dream... I just can't devote enough time to practicing! Sigh.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear that you had a great weekend! Keep it up!
Emma