The Early Bird Gets the Worm

Today I woke up, inexplicably, at 5am. Ugh. I got up, washed henna out of my hair, pottered around a bit and got in to practise at my usual time.

Practising went much better this morning than yesterday.

I’ve had a look at what I need to do for my end-of-year exam. It’s a matter of lots of orchestral extracts, lots of scales, and one piece. The choice of pieces is actually rather narrow, which is good in a way: it means I’m unlikely to shoot myself in the foot and play something which I’d rather have saved for my final recital next year.

My arranging assignment continues to go smoothly but take ages; even with advanced tools it takes a long time to do data entry of music notation, because there’s just a lot of data. I’m finding myself disliking the layout aspects of Sibelius; nothing new there, and I’ve been meaning to fix this by learning Lilypond for a few years now… perhaps over the summer I’ll have the time to work on some of my transcription projects. In the meantime, the arranging assignment must be handed in as a Sibelius file, and some of the composition tools are useful.

In about a half hour I have the first rehearsal of the Reinecke trio Op. 188 for horn, oboe and piano. I’m looking forward to it; it’s a good piece, without too many technical challenges for the horn, and while I’ve not yet met the pianist in person I know I have enjoyed playing with the oboist in other ensembles.

This evening:
J.S. Bach – St John Passion
Trinity College of Music Chamber Orchestra and Chorus perform under the baton of Richard Egarr.
7.30pm, Old Royal Naval College Chapel, SE10
£10/£7

I’m not sure whether I’ll go, it depends how tired I am, but it would be a shame to miss. I had been planning on doing some flat-hunting tonight but have decided to leave it until next week, when my arranging assignment and the long weekend will both be far behind me.