When it rains it pours

In the past two weeks I have gotten two calls to play dance classes from the company in town I would love to work for full time. Unfortunately I have had gigs which conflicted with said classes and had to turn them down. I hate turning down anything thats an opportunity to make more money, especially when its a fun gig that gets turned down. One one hand I guess its really fortunate that i have the chance to turn anything down, and the gig that I'm doing is actually pretty ok. Its just that this irrational fear that if i turn down too many chances with an ensemble eventually they will stop calling... I hope that doesn't happen.

The other thing about it that bugs me is that the first half of this month I was pretty barren in terms of work and now its full throttle. If only the planets would align and the schedules would line up i could live like a king, albeit a very poor king, but a king none the less..

I contacted the personnel manager of the orchestra I mentioned auditioning for last post. Turns out there are NO live auditions for percussion, while this makes the whole thing a lot less stressful its a little annoying because I was looking forward to getting into these high pressure situations again. In addition i need to find a decent video camera and hope they do not mind it being filmed in my practice space. Lack of a good venue to practice and play in is probably the biggest thing I regret with being out of school. Even if I'm very content with the studio I rent to practice, something tells me recording timpani on a video camera in a 100 square foot room with brick walls will not really bring across the best in my playing...Maybe I should have taken up flute.

Listening wise, Schumanns Kinderszenen Op. 15 popped up on my Ipod today while on the subway. This is some hip hip music. Kinderszenen is Schumans reflections on childhood as an adult. I haven't spend a serious amount of time with Schumans piano music I was blown away, this is so fresh, playful. I think you could put lyrics on top of any of these and have a hit today! Im almost postive pop players like Ben Folds or Joe Jackson must take some serious inspiration from the work. Vladimir Horowitz was on my Ipod and I found a video on YouTube, so Enjoy!