Well, finals are over, classes are done, and tomorrow I am getting on a plane back to Colorado. It certainly has been an interesting few months – I’ve learned so much more than just music. I will try to finally get that series on classes wrapped up, perhaps on the plane ride tomorrow.

First of all, I must apologize for the extended lack of blog updates – this has been a rather crazy week. My Thanksgiving was quite wonderful, and almost completely (though unintentionally) devoid of piano. My life since returning last Monday has consisted of maniacal catch-up practice and other work necessary to be fully prepared for final exams, which start a week from now.

Yesterday I had a fleeting moment of self-doubt; my lesson last week did not go so well (I’ve been struggling with the same memorization issues that have been plaguing me for as long as I can remember) and all the assignments due were beginning to weigh on my mind.
However, the last 24 hours have been a sort of ‘perfect storm’ of all possible morale boosts: yesterday night I was invited to what turned out to be – though I did not realize it beforehand – a fancy, invitation-only (read: for wealthy donors) Mannes festival concert at Carnegie Hall (one major benefit to being part of the social group anchored by graduate students who get to play in such prestigious events); today I had an absolutely fabulous last piano lesson of the semester (I believe I finally understand the concept of proper memorization, which pleases me more than I can put in words); and the last English essay of the term, which is a research paper and something I fully expected to almost completely ruin my week, has turned out to be enormously satisfying, not least because it gives me an excuse to spend time in the big NYPL Research Library near Times Square.
Expending my life in practice rooms, I sometimes forget that I am in NYC. Being able to visit a place such as this library, which is like walking into a cathedral or something from Classic Rome, reminds me that there is still culture in the world. Then walking through Grand Central Station on the way home, in all its holiday regalia, was just the icing on my cake. The fairy-tale version of New York City does still exist, at least in my own mind.

Dr. Atomic

I received a call from my friend about an hour and a half before this show was due to start saying that he had an extra ticket. So, after rushing back to my room from the practice center, which ironically is less than five minutes from the opera house so sort of an unfortunate timing, we set out again.
Now, I went into this opera with high expectations. I’d heard good things about it, and the subject matter (the development of the atomic bomb) looked quite interesting. In other words, I had an open mind. However, after sitting through the entire thing, I can say it is probably one of the two or three worst performances for which I have ever paid money to see. The production itself was as good as could be expected (it is the Metropolitan Opera, after all) but the story line was close to incoherent, it’s debatable whether those notes could even be counted as ‘music’, and the words would probably have been more eloquent if someone had just repeatedly opened a dictionary at random and picked whatever happened to be at the top of each page. One of my friends left at the intermission.

I honestly don’t understand modern art. It’s as though all semblance of skill has been replaced with weirdness. John Adams (the composer) has some good pieces – I’ve played several – but this is not one of them. Someone is going to read this and say similar things were written about, for example, The Rite of Spring, but can an objective case really be made that such a piece is actually an IMPROVEMENT on anything written by Chopin or Mozart? It’s as though art in general is engaged in an exponential free fall where the only goal is to be more obnoxiously strange than the next person in line.

Now that I’ve been here for two months, there is definitely a standard schedule developing. Each weekday morning I wake up at 7 (earliest on the floor), check my email, take a shower (as the earliest, I get to use the bathroom while it’s still clean), eat my cereal with yogurt (anyone who hasn’t discovered the joys of Greek yogurt is leading and incomplete life), and put together some sort of lunch (my current favorite is fresh bread with brie and onions). I load my backpack with whatever notebooks and other supplies are needed for that day’s classes and take a bus to school, invariably arriving at least an hour before my first class of the day (which is 10 am except on Wednesdays and Fridays). This way I can score a practice room for an hour and never have to worry about being late due to traffic or an unforeseen event in the dorm. After classes, I walk two blocks to the subway and spend the next four, often five hours at the practice center.
I’ve already joined the ’social circle’ there, which does have benefits when it comes to scheduling rooms with nicer pianos, though the only other undergraduate in the group is a senior and I’ve been mistake for a Masters’ student three times so far just this week. I’m not quite sure when and where the other undergraduates practice – sometimes I wonder if they even actually DO – but I’m finding I prefer to be around older students anyway as they generally tend to be a bit more focused.
After the practice center, I take a different bus and a second train back up to my dorm. One of the few things (other than sleep) that I still do for fun is cook, so I often spend up to an hour on that each evening. Of course it doesn’t always take that long, but there are only a few of us on the floor who get more ambitious than frozen pizza or macaroni and cheese, so at least I don’t often have to fight for the kitchen. My homework is still quite simple and never too challenging, but, as you know, I tend to be quite obsessive about such things so I use far more time than is really necessary for doing it. There is also a certain amount of wasted ’slop’ time caused by living in a dorm, so I never get to bed before midnight. If go back to school for recital in the evening, which happens not infrequently, I often will be up past one finishing things off. This is by choice though, as I easily could keep normal sleeping hours if I wasn’t pushing myself to do so much extra practice. I don’t especially miss Colorado (alright, I hardly even think about it at the moment), but I think this is mostly due to being always busy with something. I have no opportunity to sit in a room and rot, and I’m still actually enjoying the big city. I expect by the time I get to Christmas I’ll be ready for a break.

It’s literally impossible to walk down the street here for longer than 30 seconds without hearing SOMEONE say something about the political process. This photo was a taken outside our dorm building, which was used as a polling place, at around 8:15 a.m. and shows about one tenth of the line.

Voting Line at the YWHA

My dear sister Naomi has just arrived on the bus (yes, they keep insane schedules), and will be spending the weekend with me and a couple of her friends from school last year, who are now living just up the street from me. I think I might actually get to experience some of the NYC that everyone ELSE knows but those of us who live here really don’t even think about.

Lucia di Lammermoor

I went with a bunch of singer friends to see Lucia di Lammermoor at the Metropolitan Opera this evening. I don’t generally enjoy opera, but seeing ANYTHING done at this level is an amazing experience.

I live my life in three places at the moment – four, if you count the subway. Number one is the dorm. The second is Mannes college itself, and the final location is the Mannes practice center.

The Practice Center
I’m limited to three hours per day here. The place is located on the third floor of an office building one block down from Juilliard, in purpose-built ‘practicing cubicles’ which are almost completely sound-proof. We are encouraged to schedule rooms in advance, but it’s not required and if I time visits correctly there are usually rooms available anyway.

Mannes College
I have the right to practice here for an hour a day, which is usually all the time I can find anyway. Mannes has a very cramped facility, even for its small size, so rooms are ALWAYS in use and must almost invariably be booked in advance.

92nd Street Y
This is actually a YWHA - Young Women’s Hebrew Association. In practice this affects us only in the timing of office closures (Friday evening through Sunday morning instead of Saturday and Sunday) and certain food restrictions (no pork or shellfish allowed in the building, for example.) The complex is large, in two different towers. There are only about 30 of us total from the college, but the college was a little late in booking rooms so we’ve ended up on different floors, one in each of the towers. Not exactly an ideal arrangement. There are no provided meals - everything must be bought and/or cooked, and bathrooms are shared between the entire floor (one floor is for guys, the other for girls.) Things are not perfect, but it is a reasonably nice place to live.

I finally made it off the island of Manhattan for the first time last night! It was very pleasant to actually see trees and grass again, which I hadn’t noticed until this point don’t really exist in Manhattan. The inner city is almost the ultimate caricature of an urban landscape…it’s like nothing one can find anywhere in Colorado. Strangely I don’t exactly feel out of place here, even though I’ve obviously never lived in a city like this before.

Supposedly Tropical Storm Hanna visited us yesterday, but all I saw was some rain not even worthy of a Coloradoan thunder storm. Apparently Long Island had a much worse time of it but the city was spared. For now.