Solo and Ensemble Experince and Lessons...

In the break of dawn at 7:30, I woke up to the buzzer and did my stuff, ate breakfast and got a ride with Amanda to FSU to play clarinet in front of weird people to get graded. I sat in the back while Amanda and Justin sat up front while going to the (still closed) Fresh Market to pick up Kiara and Jessica. On the way there, I learned my first lesson of the day: never drive up my neighbors driveway, it is WAY too steep for a small sedan to clear without scraping the bumper.

We stopped by Publix on the way to the FSU music building and learned my second lesson while in Publix: Americans walk really, really fast when they want to. Throughout the day, the group was walking super-duper fast and listening to me complain about how I hate walking. We finally reached the FSU Music School and went up to the practice rooms to warm up for a clarinet choir. There in the practice room, I finally noticed how dorky I look in all black, especially with my matching black glasses.

After warming up and playing through our song once, the choir went down and listened to an oboe solo, played quite while may I say, written by Mozart. Then an light bulb went of in my mind: All Mozart solos are almost the same with slight variations in the melodies (Okay, I may be exaggerating but they have the same styles). We then played for our judge and did quite well, later confirmed by a superior rating.

So now, I have nothing to do for some 3 hours. We finished the choir at ~10:30ish and my solo is at 2:30PM. Melissa, Amanda, Justin, Jessica and I went down to Pancheros to chill. I got a quesadilla there and got mocked for my pronunciation of the Mexican food. When eating, I saw the LCD TVs and another lesson got reinforced in my mind: Congress is stupid. Why would Congress worry about Roger Clemens when there's almost a recession going on? Stupid people.

Apparently, Amanda and Melissa didn't like Panchero's so after I finished, I followed them to *insert Mediterranean restaurant name here* and read the first three chapters of Tale of Two Cities. I spent almost 20 minutes perusing 20 pages and still don't understand it. Grr... Though, their Baklava(?) is good and cheered me up.

When finished, we went to the car, got our clarinets and went to listen to other people play. We listened first to the flute choir from my school. The piece was designed so that every player was featured as a soloist but I never caught on until like the last 4 movements. I feel stupid for not recognizing it. After listening to more solos, I went to warm up again and came back down. I learned another lesson while waiting in the room I'm suppose to play: Never EVER be in the same room as your judge, with your instrument out and ready to play. Makes you sweat like a pig.

My solo turned out really well except for a few mishaps (which I won't talk about). Then I listened other really nice solos... another lesson: the audience won't know if you messed up unless 1. you seriously screwed up or 2. they know the music. Prime example is when Amanda is playing Mozart's concerto, I could tell when she was struggling and when she was rolling, but when Dana and Christine was playing, I couldn't tell any difference when they were struggling or not.

After that, the day went by pretty fast. I stayed there for my score and found out the stupid food machine doesn't take bills. I got a ride back home from Amanda with Lila this time and on the way back, another lesson: Everybody curses. No elaboration on that. At night, my family went out to Longhorn as planned and I got a gigantic steak (18 ounce!!!) that I didn't finish...

That's my day.

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