Mostly Trombone Stuff

I got my sub-list rejection letter from the Minnesota Orchestra yesterday. I've already hung it up with the rest of my budding collection of rejections. I guess I should be upset, but I'm not. For the first time, probably ever, I felt like I played about as well as I could have in the audition and the fact that I didn't win the audition was due solely to the fact that there were better players out there and not that I blew it by playing under my potential. Considering that I was going up against the likes of PAO, Rick Gaynor, and who knows who else, I'm not surprised. We'll see what happens in the next audition when I have another couple of years of practice in, have had some lessons with Kari and Doug, and have some more experience.

Things have been going well at school. I've spent all of my lesson time this semester working on Zellmer Competition materials. We're recording for the first time this Wednesday. Wish me luck. I've definitely made a lot of progress on my excerpts, so far this year (another reason I'm not too upset about the audition results). I'm finding that skills on excerpts carry over and that I'm able to get new excerpts up to a fairly high level much more quickly. This is good, because working on excerpts can be a huge drag if you have to keep doing it week after week with no break (at least for me). I'm in a music history class that covers music of the 19th Century. It's an incredible class. I'm learning a lot. I have to write a big paper, but this time I'm going to get an early start on it...maybe.

Lisa and the baby are doing well. Both are getting bigger.

It's too cold this weekend to even walk the dog.