The Next Step in Trichotomy

Upstaging myself

I was hoping to take a breather with piano after the Carnegie Hall concert. So it was nice not to have any performances to worry about in the past 2 weeks.

It is true I was asked to play in the amateur group next week, in a group performing sci-fi themes, but the group dropped like flies in the last couple of months. What started as Battle Star Galactica, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek medley turned into just Star Wars and Star Trek, with me pulled into playing one of the pieces for Star Wars a couple of weeks ago. And it's possible we'll have another pianist drop out of it, so I'll have to play Darth Vader March as well as Luke Skywalker theme too. That's fine - I already memorised them and use them for warm up all the time - but that performance didn't feel like it was 'mine.' We had a rehearsal today, and it was all over the place. I don't think it matters tough; in performances like these the quality of music doesn't matter all that much.

I also rehearsed with Dramatic Soprano and the Dramatic Tenor for their entry into next year's Carnegie Hall concert for the amateur group. I also didn't feel like it was 'my' performance, so did not feel a lot of pressure. However, the piece (Madame Butterfly's love duet from the end of Act I) is tricky, so if they get picked - and they probably will, are as close to sho-in as possible - I will actually have to learn it.

The amateur group's organiser called me up a couple of weeks ago and asked if I'm interested in play a concerto with an orchestra at Carnegie Hall. It turns out he's planning ahead for the future. He is planning to put together an amateur musician orchestra himself, but he'll be hand-picking musicians in it to ensure it has good quality and personality. I hope it succeeds. And for the Carnegie Hall showcase in 2015, he's planning the orchestral program that involves me being the soloist in a piano concerto. So that sounds fine. We went back and forth about what pieces to play, and ended up on Chopin's 1st, 3rd movement. I like the concerto but it's one of the harder ones - the others we discussed was the Mozart 23rd 3rd movement, Poulenc's 1st movement, Schumann's 3rd movement, or the slow movement from Mozart 20 or 21. But, he seems to have made up his mind and the date is far away that I'm not too worried about not having time to learn it. But, the answer to 'how to upstage myself after playing Revolutionary etude with one hand' turns out to be 'get an orchestra to back me up."

I feel like he is trying to make his group one in which amateurs come perform not to look for support but to show off their quality. It stands to reason that he'll have an audition process for Carnegie Hall, or would tolerate 'ringers' at those concerts, or that he's not interested in doing community outreach concerts at venues that have sub-par pianos. I suppose people who play for fun already have other venues to go for. This group is for 'good' amateurs only.

I suppose that there is no such thing as running out of challenges to take on.

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More brain usage

At work, I've been given the task of designing and implementing the storage system of our next-generation data staging platform. It's a bigger thing than my 'main' project from the last year. So I spent a lot of time doing research and writing design documents last month, using up a lot of brain power, something that I thought I wouldn't have to do since graduating from grad school. Though, the hardest part is that I find that people really like to hear themselves talk, and everyone has an opinion. Unfortunately only some of the opinions are actually useful, but most are not, so it takes a lot of time and energy to sift through the gems from the rubbish. So while the first part of the month was spent gathering data, the second of the part was spent looking into everyone's ideas and see if they're dumb or worth taking. I think right now we have a decent design, and it's just a matter of convincing everyone that it's good enough.

I had a meeting with my manager last week and it sounds like I'm on the top end of performance on my current level, so it's conceivable that I'll be up for promotion next year, which would be exciting. When I took this job I thought I would be taking it easy, and for the most part it has been easy. But I feel like there has been more and more expectation put on me - our tech lead actually said that I'm the only one who is suited to designing the new storage system - that I'm feeling more and more pressure at work too.

I suppose that is to be expected because I have a Ph.D. Our director had a one-on-one meeting with me a few months ago and was very concerned that I did not feel like I was being challenged, even though I had my plate full of mundane tasks. I told him I can use mundane tasks for a while.

I do miss not having to use my brain.

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Busy with business

We barely had a weekend to ourselves since the Carnegie Hall concert.

The weekend after the concert we went to the Treasurer's home for a 'dumpling party', where she invited many of her musician friends to her place to cook dumplings from all over the world. However, since most of us were Asian, we ended up getting a lot of Japanese dumplings and some pot-stickers. It was a lot of fun. The best part was that we got to see her neighbourhood Kew Gardens. It has a town center that is busy, a suburb-feeling part with nice-sized houses, and a big park. So it was a very nice visit. We got out for a walk and found that Kew Garden has a very nice park. But we mostly just talked shop about amateur music group stuff - who is performing with whom for next Carnegie Hall or monthly concerts, etc. So I can imagine it can get boring for the significant others. The tall pianist and Japanese pianist were the only ones there when we arrived, but as time went on, the Violinist showed up too, and the Flamenco dancer and the Vietnamese guitarist also showed up. But it got to be decent-sized crowd toward the end. We got there at 3 pm or so, and stayed till 10 or 11.

The week after that was Easter Sunday, and La Professeure was upstate visiting her parents, so I got the whole weekend to myself. It went by very fast. Saturday I had to go into the city for the Star Trek rehearsal, after which I walked around the Riverside park (it was cherry-bloom time, so it looked lovely), and went to a movie. Living in the suburbs is most certainly inconvenient. Rehearsal was at noon, but I had to leave the house by 10 in order to catch the buses and trains. I took a train back at 6:30, but by the time I got back it was 8. Train and bus schedules are annoying.

The following Saturday (last week), we were invited to an easter egg hunt by La Professerue's college friend. It was quite boring, actually, since we don't have children and for the most part it was watching their friends' kids play. And we don't even know those kids. But it was a nice day, so it was nice to be out. That night we went to see Igudesman and Joo in Long Island University Post. Treasurer told us about it, and we went with her friends and family. It was funny - but not hilariously so, since I had seen some of their acts on youtube already. The act I liked most was the Rhapsody in Blue that the mix in different styles and the Gymnopedie that the pianist plays while lying on the floor (pedalling with his head). Also, at one point the pianist pretend to have lost his right hand, and played Godowsky's left-hand only arrangement of Chopin's Op. 10 no. 6. I'd never heard the Godowsky Chopin etude arrangements performed live until I did it, but now in a month I heard two. I read a review that said they basically use music as a device for making physical comedy, rather than using music as the target of their humour. That's why I was only mildly amused. The audience loved it though. That day took so much out of me that I slept most of last Sunday.

This weekend was slightly more easy. Yesterday we stayed at home most of the day. La Professeure had arranged for a handy-woman to come work on various things in the house (I don't remember what things because I took no interest), but we went out to Lowes to get supplies. And then I slept for two hours immediately afterwards. Today was slightly better; La Professeure graded papers (it is the end of the semester) and I went into the city for a chamber music groups' play-in. Since the Treasurer took over the Chamber Music group she's been organising more events. However the people in that group tended to be flaky. So even though we should have more than a dozen people come, half of them flaked out - the only people who came were me, the dramatic soprano and her husband (who will be the narrator in our Star Trek nubmer), the trumpeter, the Treasurer, her friend, and the tenor, who weren't even planning to come but just stuck around because he'd been rehearsing madame butterfly with dramatic sop and me. It was fun to play music with them but it was a disappointment how many people flaked out.

I'm not sure if it was just the week or the commute finally catching up to me, but I feel that, as spring rolled around, I am having less and less energy.

Part of growing old, I suppose.

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