For those of you that didn't know, I actually began my time at Illinois Wesleyan as a music major. Long story short, as time went on, I found out that it just isn't the right place for me. At all. I switched to a music minor, and now I have continued this loving music thing in grad school. I'm really thankful and happy to be playing still. It makes my Tuesday and Thursday nights (we rehearse from 7:30-10:00 pm).
Even so, it's really interesting to see the differences between the orchestra at IWU and the orchestra here. First, there are an absolute PLETHORA of string players. They just go on, and on, and on....it's amazing. I think we're at around thirty violinists. At least. And the brass section is decent, but sometimes we're down a trombone. Apparently, it's a lot harder to keep the winds/brass section to the normal grouping that is in an orchestra due to player turnover. Most of the instrumentalists are in undergrad, but there are a few grad students (including my favorite, a five foot tall girl tuba player who is in nuclear engineering).
Our first concert is October 10th, and one of the odder things was that we didn't read one of the movements to a piece until last Tuesday...quite the change from the typical day 1-sightread, day 2-perfect notes expected by Mr. Eggleston. We also call our director by his first name, Adam, and he makes it a point to be very approachable. I think part of the reason for this is that over time, MIT faculty/staff/administrators have recognized that it is crucial to have extracurriculars that help students keep their sanity, as well as have other adults in their lives that aren't giving out terrible problem sets.
Anyway, our first concert is:
"Punkie Night" by Peter Child (an MIT composer)
"Troisieme Piano Concerto" by Prokofiev
"Carnival" by Dvorák
"Sinfonia Sevillana" by Turina
It is definitely not my favorite concert ever, buuuuut next concert is Eroica, which should be really great. And let's be honest...I'm just glad to be playing.
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