The Curious Lark: Chamber Marathon!

Hello everyone,

Last Saturday, Shepherd School of Music hosted a chamber music marathon of whopping 6 concerts ranging from 10 am to basically 10 pm!

That has to be the most intense marathon of chamber music I have ever witnessed,

but it was so fun to be a part of it!

The theme of the marathon was 'music in the last 100 years'

to go along with the Rice Centennial celebration,

so we got to hear A LOT (12 hrs worth) of music written pretty recently,

a lot of them by composers still living and composing today!

I performed 2 pieces in 2 of the concerts,

first being the Khachaturian Clarinet, Violin, and Piano trio,

and the second, The Gran Turismo by Andrew Norman.

I had never heard of either of these pieces, and it was such a fun experience learning and getting to know these two pieces as well as the musicians in the groups throughout the semester!

I can't tell you just how different working on these two pieces were!

I mean, the pieces themselves are very different, but even the rehearsing and getting them ready for the performances was a completely different experience altogether.

With the Khachaturian, everything fell into place pretty quickly,

and most of the semester was spent polishing and bringing out the character of the piece

(because it's such a colorful piece!)

and learning to balance and play together.

For Gran Turismo, I felt pretty nervous about it almost throughout the whole preparation process partly because I had to step in for another player about half way through the semester,

and partly because Gran Turismo is based on the car race, and so there are many sections where we are used as sound effects rather than actual melodies or harmonies.

I think it was a process for all of us to get used to this style of playing.

But once we did get used to it, the 8 of us had so much fun rocking out on stage with all the funky rhythms and sound effects ;)

Khachaturian Trio!!