The Capitol Quartet is going to Houston!!!!!

So y'all may have remembered from the last post that I and some other bassoonists, collectively referred to as the "Capitol Quartet" managed to win the grant to go to Houston!!!! W00T!!!!!
This was such a fun group effort, just because there is so much bassoon love within our quartet. Working on writing our application and collecting all the paperwork just to submit the necessary materials to be considered for the grant has already brought us a lot closer together than we were before.. can't wait to see how things are after the trip... lol
But one of the requirements of this travel grant initiative is that we have to blog about our activities and experiences. I volunteered my blog since I had one and it was already (supposedly) about the bassoon. So heads up for those of you who normally read this blog for ulterior reasons, this blog is about to be filled with stories, project details and our learning experiences.

:D

I am SO EXCITED for this!!!!!!!!


So, we filled our paperwork, created our budget, tweaked our resumes, contacted famous bassoonists in Houston and are currently working on hashing out our schedule. The people we intend to study with are famous bassoonists such as Cheryl Huddleston, Elise Wagner, TK DeWitt, and Ben Kamins.
So far the plan is to stay in a decent hotel (which may even have a pool!!), Pearson will be our chauffeur as he owns the car (yay for road trips!!) and we'll try to catch some dress rehearsals/concerts while we're down there. Sadly this travel plan initiative is supposed to happen over spring break, and that appears to be dead time for a lot of the performing centers, like the opera and ballet. However the Symphony is doing a pops concert, and that will be fun. Since we're musicians, we're hoping to catch some rehearsal.. it is invaluable to see the process of art as it is being cooked, it helps to inform our understanding of how to deal with problems and issues that invariably come up for musicians.
I remember when I was studying with Valentin Martchev full time, he made a mistake while sight reading my etude to show me how it was supposed to be played. That mistake opened up a whole new world to me, it made me realize that as amazing and untouchable professional musicians are, they screw up too, they are also imperfect! It gave me hope that one day I would be able to attain that level, since I knew that my playing would never be perfect. But seeing rehearsals is just inspiring like that, it gives you hope that one day you can become like this, because you see the human side of things rather than the shining bravura that musicians put on to impress their audiences.

But anyways, Pearson and I met for lunch last Saturday and tried to work our schedule out. We'll probably meet again at some point soon with Leah and Michael to get more solidified. There's supposed to be a meeting that we'll all attend, but that date hasn't been released yet... that being said we should probably find some bassoon quartet rep... haha
I'm not worried yet about things, as of now we kinda have a head start, but the ball needs to get rolling a little faster.
I found one thing written for sax in C, so that should work, and it is a transcription of something Villa Lobos wrote for his bachianas brazillieras, so it will probably super sexy on bassoon.. just because bassoon is 10X more sexy than saxophone... oh yeah. ;)

AHH!!! This is so exciting, I can't wait for this trip.. but until then I need to start working on the basic skills reqs that Prof. Jensen has us do... it's tough stuff man.

ok laterz.