My Birthday Weekend

What could have been a really boring weekend actually turned into a really good one. I am now in a fantastic mood and ready to start my last to weeks at university. The weekend started out with a relaxing Friday night at home curled up in several sweatshirts and a blanket, talking to Holly, watching TV, and reading (for pleasure, not school). It was just the kind of evening I needed.

Saturday was a masterclass with Michael Webster, the clarinet professor at Shepard School of Music at Rice University. I got the chance to play Brahms for him. I was informed that I would be playing for him on Friday afternoon, so it was quite sudden but fortunately exams are in a few weeks, so I was prepared enough. I half like and half disliked Michael. I warmed up to him quite a bit as the day went on. However, he encouraged me to pulse my air as a method of creating musical direction, which is a big clarinet no-no. At least with every other teacher I have ever had. His wife was there as well, doing a masterclass with the flutes. They are the most amusing couple ever. They are quite quirky. I enjoy their personalities a lot. After the "official" masterclass, Rowan, Natalie, and Fin had open lessons with Michael. These quickly turned into an extension of the masterclass. I sat in on all of them. I found them quite interesting. We covered very different topics with each person, which I enjoyed. By the end of the day, we were all pretty much in agreement that Michael is very knowledgeable about the clarinet but he does not execute very well. He is actually an average player but a interesting teacher. I don't think that I could ever study with him for an extended period of time because I don't think he would motivate me to improve very much but I think I could get something out of a few lessons with him.

We were planning on going out for a couple drinks after the masterclass but by the end Natalie and I both had horrible headaches. (We had been working on high notes for about 45 minutes prior. That will get to you.) So we all headed home. I was very pleased because Peter, a saxophone player in my reed class who also happens to be in my communications paper, bought me a present. He got me a t-shirt from the NZ music festival that is going on right now. I was so touched that he thought to get me something. I wasn't really expecting gifts. It was a really good end to the day.

This morning was a very lazy morning for me. I was considering going surfing with Natalie but I was tired and didn't have a wetsuit available, so I ended up staying home. As it turned out, the waves were no good today anyway. But I'm thinking of going out with her some other weekend and she will teach me how to surf. That's going to be really sweet. The afternoon was a concert given by Michael and his wife, whose name I cannot remember. She is a fantastic flute player. And it's easy to tell how passionate she is about music. It was very refreshing. I feel that so many professional musicians can be very jaded. She just simply loves music; it doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. The concert overall was really nice. It was an entertaining program, rather than making the audience eat their vegetables as Larry Racliffe would say. There was a really cool arrangement of Debussey's Petite Suite for clarinet, flute, and piano that I really liked.

Afterwards, Natalie, Rowan, and I ended up talking to Michael for half an hour at least. He is very interesting to talk to. Like I said, extremely knowledgeable about the clarinet and music in general, he just doesn't play that well. Meeting these people makes me a bit homesick. They kept mentioning places and people in Texas that I know and I kept having the strong urge to bounce up and down saying, "I know that place/person. I am from Texas!" At the same time, I don't want to leave New Zealand. I am now at the point where I am very attached. I miss home but at the same time, I feel like there's so much more about New Zealand that I can just now get more in-depth in. I'm finally getting comfortable in Auckland, at uni, in the school of music. I'm just now getting to the point where I can say that I am starting to feel close to some of the people in the music school that I've met. But I also have a lot of things to go back to in the States. I can already tell that leaving New Zealand is going to be really bittersweet for me.

Anywho... When we finally extricated ourselves from the lobby (we were the last people to leave), we decided to go out for the drinks we didn't get last night. It was really nice. We went to a bar off Queen Street where you could actually here the people you are talking to. We sat there for at least two hours. It was really fun. Natalie is someone that I have been talking to since this first week of classes at uni but I have never really gotten a chance to get to know Rowan. So getting to connect with him was cool. He is a very nice guy. His girlfriend is currently living in Sweden, so we got to swap stories about long-distance relationships and how Skype is the greatest invention ever. It was just really great to get to socialize a bit more with them.

Upon arriving home, I realized that I had about five texts from Amanda asking me what I was up to and if she could come over. I told her that I was cooking dinner but she could come over whenever she wanted to. About 15 minutes later, my apartment was bombarded by not just Amanda but also Lorissa, Scott, Eric, and Chris, bearing cake and wine. So I did get to hang out with that crowd for a while on my birthday too. I am going to gain 20 pounds or so from all of the food people got me. There was the cake that those yahoos brought over, the cake that my roommie Laura baked for me, a king-sized chocolate bar from another roommate, Holly, and a big bag of Pineapple Lumps from Natalie, who insisted that I have to have them some time as they are a "New Zealand thing." Plus a box of Pam's (that's a brand here) nutrigrain bars from Eric. It ended up being a great weekend. A good entrance into my next decade. I am happy. Yay!
Peace.