Garth Newel :: Everyday Life

Hello everyone!

As you can imagine, everyday life at Garth Newel Music Center includes lots and lots of,, well, music.  In all different forms.  

Most of the day is spent rehearsing...  everyone does this for the better part of the day, including us fellows, guest musicians, and the faculty.

Then, if we have enough energy at night, we sight read for fun.  In case you have never heard of sight reading, it's when musicians come together and read chamber music without ever having had time to rehearse.  It's usually a pretty funny train wreck, but sometimes, when you have the right group of people, it can also be incredibly satisfying.   like when we read this Schubert Cello Quintet a couple of nights ago.  Oh My Lord.  If you have not heard of this quintet, please go to Youtube or Spotify right this second and listen to the first movement.  you'll fall in love.   =)

and if you have more energy after the sight reading session, you can also just break out in spontaneous, memorized, Brahms Cello Sonatas together.   Here are my favorite two men at Garth Newel doing just that!  Our Timmay, of course, and Robbie, the pianist.  He teaches at Boston University, and I am soooo excited to get to work with him when I got there for my doctorate!

We have our final official Fellows concert on August 3rd, but we have been performing quite a bit outside of that in different churches and other community venues this week.  Most of the churches are quite small, and incredibly charming, like this one!

When we're not performing, we are probably watching the guest artists and faculty performing, along with this little fellow.

Oh, sometimes, we have a performance classes, or master classes, with the faculty and guest artists where we play for each other and get feedback.  At Garth Newel, these are also accompanied by some 4 legged friends!  I mean, shouldn't everything be accompanied by our 4 legged friends?  I think so!  =)

It can be pretty tiring, but it is also awesome spending all our days among amazing music and friends (including the 4 legged ones), and I can't believe 3 weeks have gone by here already!  We have a pretty crazy week remaining though with more concerts and rehearsals than ever!  we're all pretty exhausted at this point, and well all like to be dramatic and say things like 'I don't know if we can survive!' 'We're all gonna die...'  but the craziness...  well, somehow we are all drawn to it. and perhaps we crave it.  because in the end, what we get to do, performing amazing music with the people we love, is really an incredible gift, and we really can't ask for much more than that.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful weekend!

--Janny