Ensemble Alternance/ March 29 incident

It's very rare to see foreign artists to perform in our school, but last night, the opportunity came.

Ensemble Alternance from France came to perform in Queens College at 7.30pm.

I didn't know about this event at all at first, since I do not usually read the school calendar.

When I was heading out of the school, a guy with some thick accent came up to me to ask for direction to LeFrak. Then I saw a couple of other men, speaking French, holding instruments, followed him into the hall. I thought it was a jazz band from Europe, but later I checked the calendar and found out that it was a new music ensemble from France.

So HP and me decided to give it a try, since new music performance is not so frequently happening in my school, except the percussion concerts or Nota Bene performances.

What they played were new ---- and I mean NEW ---- works from the new generation of French composers. They played 3 works, which I had no idea about the titles, but I could certainly memorize the names for you: Gerard Pesson, Mark Andre, and Phillipe Schoeller.

These composers all intend to deconstruct the way of composition, and create a new sound out of ordinary instrumental idiomatics ----- you might say, "Oh well, who doesn't?". But this is not the point, the result is more important!

What they created was a kind of sound which they describe as "Saw dust".

Pesson's work was the most obvious example of "saw dust". He doesn't have very loud passages (if there were a passage), instead, he made the instruments creating snowflakes of sounds within a pointilistic texture.

My personal favourite would be the Andre and the Schoeller. They gave my nerves more impact than Pesson's work.

The musicians were great. HP and me went up to the violist, Pierre-Henri Xuereb, to ask for a class for our Paul Chihara Duo Concertante. Monsieur Xuereb agreed happily and we'll be meeting him in his hotel tomorrow at 10am! He heard Paul's name and exclaimed, "Paul Chihara! Of course! Redwood for viola and percussion!" Wow!

One thing that worths a mention is Monsieur Xuereb was a student of William Primrose. Ooh~~~ :o

I will write about the lesson after it happened.


March 29th Incident

HP went to Manhattan for a lesson today and I was all alone @ home. It's a rare oppotunity to be by myself and do what I feel like doing totally. I did a lot of practising (much more than anytime since I studied here), and I thought of watching a movie before 6pm, cuz that would be half price.

4:15pm show, I thought trailers would take 20 minutes or so. So I took a bus around 4:30pm, thinking that it would take 5 minutes to get there as usual.

WRONG!!

I was DEAD WRONG

It didn't happen that way!! First of all, the Q88 that I took was packed with people that I had to cross the border line. Then, more passengers means more stops. It took me about 10 minutes to get there.

WORST THING: After running a short distance from the bus stop, the lady in the box office told me that I was late for 20 minutes.

FUCK ME!!!

So I cursed that exact two words while walking my ass to Starbucks nearby, and bought a bottle of Strawberry Frapuccino, which is a coffee-free drink. Surprisingly, I found out that it's cheaper to buy such Starbucks product in Starbucks itself rather than the grocery store near my place! It's like 20 cents less.

Anyway, that drink was bought to comfort myself ---- even just a little ---- over the feeling of loss that I didn't get to watch "V for Vendetta".

FUCK ME!!! More practice then...