A midsummer’s update

So thought I’d just do an update since I haven’t posted any videos in ages. My schedule for the past few months has been pretty routine. In short, it’s sort of part-time work with part-time school. I use the term “part-time” loosely, because sometimes my weekly work hours sometimes totals to be something close to the number of hours a full-time employee would be doing. It’s weird being both a student and an employee at the same time because I constantly find myself in a dilemma when deciding which one takes priority. And this is especially tricky since the one course that I am taking is pretty much all group work. Heh.

The SFU Chamber Orchestra is still going strong this summer, which is something new, since we usually take a hiatus and make our return in the Fall. This summer, we’re playing a variety of pieces including:

• Concerto Grosso No. 10 in b minor, by Vivaldi
• Memory of the Wind ~Legend of the Eternal Wind~, by Nobuo Uematsu, re-arranged by Tsuyoshi Sekito, and re-rearranged by Me!
• One Summer's Day, by Joe Hisashi

Most of our repertoire requires substantial substitution by other instruments, since our ensemble is a bit smaller than it is usually. My arrangement of Memory of the Wind ~Legend of the Eternal Wind~ was composed strictly for our current ensemble, so there were some interesting challenges to overcome and redistribution of soloists to make things work. Our set-up is roughly like this:

• 2 flutes
• 2 clarinets
• 1 horn
• 1 piano
• 6 violins
• 1 cello

For example, a solo line that was originally for trumpet was given to the clarinets in the arrangement, or something like that. We will be premiering this work and the concerto at the end of July in an out-doors talent show run by the university. Stay tuned!