JENNIFER STEINFELD: My first entry

My first entry! yay! hello everyone! as yawl know from my bio, my name is Jenifer Steinfeld and I’m from Annapolis, MD. this is my first time at EMF and I think its really cool that I get to document it in a blog. I play the Viola, as does my roommate Emily.

so I have about three other blogs in which I already started talking about my time here at EMF and I decided, hey, why not recycle? so, I’m going to copy and paste together a collage of thoughts from the first day, and second day so I don’t have to attempt to very badly summarize everything which has happened. :-)

btw, this was written June 24 when I first got here. I have to borrow my roommates computer because I didn’t bring my own.

sooo....I’m at EMF now

for those of you who didn’t know EMF is the music school I got accepted to. yay!

so, I met my room mate, the ever so lovely Emily Hornbake. she happens to be absolutely AMAZING!!! so, she opens the door in an Audrey Hepburn tee shirt and jeans, her "suit case" is a chest, and her phone looks like something from the 50s. she has 3 uber sweet photos, very vintage artistic photos, and 3 books, the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, Wicked, and the complete collection of Jane Austen novels

(we are about to start to practice together) ((btw))

so when she comes in, she has these viola excerpts....guess what...I need to know them by MONDAY all SEVEN of them, and they aren’t just ANY seven, its Hindemith, Debussy, Sibelius, Harbison, Stravinsky, and Wagner....basically for those of you who don’t know, they are hard like whoa!

we went to go see a concert tonight, it was the world premiere of Billy Joel's Piano Concerto. it was AMAZING....

so I arrive here today and get to my hall and there are 5 or so ABSOLUTELY PERFECT violinists practicing in their rooms....they are SO GOOD IT DRIVES ME CRAZY AND IT SEEMS AS THOUGH THEY NEVER STOP PRACTICING!!!!! they’ve obviously done this before...

ok....I need to practice...sorry, but I do...

JUNE 25

good morning 2nd day of EMF!!!!!

so, my roomy and I woke up at 8 this morning to the wonderful sounds of the Dresden Dolls blaring through my alarm clock/cd player/radio which was sitting across the room. I swear I thought we were going to get yelled at for disturbing the peace. I’m dead tired, and I almost fell off my loft bed.

my roommate doesn’t eat breakfast. she decided that if she had to stay awake during long rehearsals all day long, then she should probably eat something, so she brought a huge box of pop tarts and "milk'n cereal bar"s. we decided to share them because that way we can get up later and not have do trek over to the cafeteria building. which is a good thing. I like eating our box of breakfast. its good.

there’s something I wanted to talk about in my last update but I totally forgot what it was. its driving me crazy. and I know, the second I get off the computer its going to come back to me and I’m gonna be like "AAHHHH HHAAAA!!!!"

at 10:30 I get to go to a seminar on "The Art and Science of Practicing".....not really something I want to do THIS early, but I’m excited, I think it will help a lot.

ok, I have to go practice the crazy excerpts that were shoved under my door last night....yay....more things I have to practice for my audition at 11:30 TOMORROW MORNING

LATER THAT DAY

both my room mate and I are freaking out. our auditions are tomorrow. these excerpts are really hard. my roommate and I met with 8 other violists to go over the excerpts plus I called my teacher and she helped a little, well, I need to get some sleep and stop stressing. its only a placement audition. wish me luck!

TODAY

so, auditions were today. I’m not very happy with how I did. I know I could have done better, but its just the seating audition for the first week, I have 5 more weeks to leave a better impression. :-D

so after I got out, Emily and I went to lunch then came back to our room and watched....Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightly and Matthew McFayden. it was.....wonderful. it left me in a daze for the rest of the afternoon. ahhh....romantic movies....

so, this evening at dinner, we ate with two other viola players and just hung out. I made a root beer float and it made me happy :-P

after dinner, Emily and I and one of the other violists went and saw the student piano concert. One word: WOW. the pieces were unbelievable. it was truly inspiring. the last girl to play, Irina Arbatskaya was sooooo unbelievable! she played Mephisto Waltz No. 1 by F. Liszt, a piece I’ve never heard before, and it was soo...indescribably good. I loved it. I think listening to piano is probably my favorite. but it has to be live. there’s something about recordings that I just don’t like as much. if I were to pick a second favorite, it would either be Jake Coleman who played an unbelievable Improvisations on Hungarian Songs Op. 20 by Bartok, or Ruby Chou who played Sonata in E-flat Major, Hob. 16/49 Allegro by Haydn.

so, now, Emily and I are just chillin in our room listening to The Phantom of the Opera, singing along, of course. I’m excited! They post orchestra and teacher assignments tomorrow at noon, I cant wait to see who and what I get! Tee hee hee!

well, there ya go! a summary of the past few days pieced together by yours truly