My IPE

I took my own sweet time writing about this one, huh? Thanks for your patience!

Basically- it went totally swimmingly. The three of us met up at 5:30 and took over the green room at Bishopsgate Institute to do some run throughs and basically just make sure that we knew what we were doing. I made sure we timed them all as well because I was massively paranoid that we were going to cut various sections short and end up with a 5 minute piece instead of 10. This was a totally valid fear as our first run clocked in at 6 minutes...

Fortunately we all relaxed and began to focus on things like dynamic change, the pace of the piece, and actually began listening to each other instead of just trying to remember what came next. We rehearsed for about an hour, brought all of the equipment downstairs, did a quick sound check to make sure that the balance between the instruments and the various amplification methods were working and then sat down to watch the start of the show.

There were six of us performing that evening. Kate, Jorge, Andreas, Heather, Nick, and myself. Kate's piece started off the evening and it was beautiful and well played and enjoyable to listen to. I had spent the whole day up until that point being really excited about the performance instead of nervous; but as soon as I heard Kate's piece I began to get nervous and stayed that way through most of the rest of the concert. Every one's pieces were interesting and engaging and it was a lovely concert.

During the intermission I went over and talked to Jo who said happy fourth of July and then did finger fireworks for me. She made the shapes with her hands and did a remarkably accurate vocal sound track to the fireworks. We decided our favorites were the swirly ones that have that really high pitched whine. I know this sounds weird, but it was totally cool and I left feeling like I really had seen a fireworks show. With all my favorite colors too.

Anyhow, back to the show- we were on last and I play the first notes of the piece. Thank god for vibrato- that way you can shake and not harm the music! It only took about 30 seconds to relax and start really enjoying what we were playing. By the penultimate section I was grinning hugely and putting my whole body into my playing.

We got a huge round of applause and I spent the rest of the night continuing to grin. Cos, Kate's bassist from her band The Rude Mechanicals came up afterwards and told me that my piece had been his favorite, that he was impressed with how well I managed to combine acoustic and electronic elements. I told him it was my first piece and he was shocked! Yay!!!

Unlike my Senior recital at Peabody where it took me months to be able to listen to the recording of my recital, I listened to this piece within 15 minutes of having played it. And then I listened to it again. And I've listened to it a couple of times since, because I still get a big kick out of it.

To celebrate I brought Dave and Gemma, and Jon and Ella back to our flat for some food where we then proceeded to play Boggle and Pit until 3:30 in the morning. It was super fun, and a verbal enough crowd that the competition in boggle was intense.

I am trying to figure out how to post the recording of the performance on the blog, but blogger doesn't host sound files, so I am exploring other hosts for that. In the meantime, if you would like to hear it, email me and I will see if I can get the file small enough to email back to you.