This week I made meaningful progress with both arranging and playing the harp, but I also had to adjust to some unexpected issues.
Arrangement
Continuing my arrangement of "picking up hands," I made great progress in the opening section of the song. Despite this, I had a deadline rapidly approaching with the FISD Annual Harp Recital arrangement and composition contest. I was making great progress with my arrangement, but knew it wouldn't be ready in time as I only had a quarter of the song outlined by Thursday and the arrangement was due Friday. Making a quick decision, I decided to shift course. For the sake of the competition, I found a score from the video game Shadow of the Colossus where I could clearly hear an idea for a call and response style duet. On the Friday of the competition I made this adjustment and it came out to be a great and fun arrangement to play! It isn't what I wanted to present for the competition, but I am glad I made the effort and found room to participate in the competition.
Playing the Harp
With the Greater North Texas Youth Orchestra, I am going to play with both of the top two orchestras at our Christmas concert this coming weekend. Also, coming up is the first recital for the GNTYO chamber program. Because of this, the Sunday rehearsal was extremely busy.
Chamber Rehearsal
For the first hour I had my chamber rehearsal where we for the first time got on a video call with an exceptional harpist our chamber coach is good friends with to work through parts of the duet my partner and I are playing. This experience was incredible, and I am now scheduling private lessons with him which will be extremely beneficial to my progress as a harpist. Also, due to the difficulty of the duet we are playing, we decided on continuing the duet into the Spring semester so we can give a much higher quality performance. By this point I had practiced for two hours and had the chamber rehearsal for an hour, so I was pretty tired, but the day continued!
Orchestra Rehearsals
I then practiced for an hour leading up to the whole orchestra rehearsal which was then another hour of rehearsal. Finally, I went to the other orchestra I am playing with to practice with them, where there was another two hours of rehearsal. It was a very long day, but all-in-all a great experience that shed a light on the business of music and the busyness of being a musician.
This was a long week that carried with it a lot of stress, but in the end I was able to adapt and work with the people around me to still come out of it having achieved many of my goals for the week. Despite the unique difficulty of the week, it also brought a relief and I feel like I am in a better place moving forward.