Brahms and Houston Symphony

Hello everyone,

Last weekend, Christiano and I had the pleasure of attending 

one of Houston Symphony's Brahms concerts!  

They are doing a whole cycle of Brahms, and I believe it was their 2nd concert of the cycle..?

(So much Brahms in my life right now...)

The program consisted of the 

Variations on a Theme of Haydn,

Violin and Cello Double Concerto,

and the 4th Symphony.

One of the first concerts I ever watched included Sarah Chang and Yo-Yo Ma playing the double concerto,

 and as you can imagine, ever since then, that concerto has always held a special place in my heart.

so I couldn't have asked for a better program for my first Houston Symphony experience!!

Christiano and I.  so excited for the night!!
even though parking was so. difficult to find  haha

frolicking before the concert

Student Rush tickets = 3rd row?  

That's our Orchestral Repertoire professor at Rice!! Mr. Halen, the Concertmaster!

After the wonderful performance by Frank Huang (Violin) and Brinton Smith (Cello),

we had our dinner during the intermission.

Which, we found all laid out for us on this cute little coffee table!

It was really good, and we quite enjoyed our dinner,

but we found that there just wasn't enough time to fully enjoy the meal during the intermission time..

We ended up being the last people out in the lobby still eating,

and since we felt like they were waiting for us to start,

we just gulped down our food and took random seats in the middle of the hall.

It turns out, it sounds much better a little further back!

And there we enjoyed the Brahms Symphony #4   =)

They have so many awesome concerts coming up,

and I can't wait to attend as many of them as I can!

If you are around the Houston area, I would highly recommend spending a night at Jones Hall

with the Houston Symphony.

It makes for a really wonderful evening!  =)

Thanks for stopping by!

--Janny

Grad Life in Snapshots

Life lately...

1. Our Half Price Books visit. Amulet was faced with a difficult decision,, you have to be looking at this calendar for a whole year after all!// 2. Amulet's impromptu midnight car washing (it was definitely a "wait,, are you serious?" moment for me.  lol) // 3. Grad life comes with stress; must take care of our skin! and act like aliens.// 4. wishing we had a record player at home...

5.  My new car!! still nameless..//  6. The first 'I go here' sticker of my life.//  7. Ares and Grandpa. (Blog post to come soon.)//  8. Study table with brownies.//  9-10.  Christiano and I studying and being distracted by the awesome Ciacconna recording!

Happy Friday!

--Janny

First Day of School!

Hello everyone!

Today was the first day of school at Rice, and the inhabitants of the 'Fighting Blueberries' apt 

were SO excited for school to start!!

(the reason we are the Fighting Blueberries apt is because both Amulet and I attended Interlochen!)

It worked out really wonderfully because Amulet and I are both in the first class together,

the Early Music History, so we got to get ready, practice a bit at home, then leave for school together!

It's a bit of a blessing, really, because I am always running late to things,

but because Amulet was there, we arrived at school way before the classroom even opened!  ;)

And because we left so early, we even had time to document our excitement as we walked to school! 

I swear, we probably looked like children on their first day of kindergarten.  haha 

Here is Amulet!  So ready for this history class!

"Amulet, how do you feel about the first day of school??"

yay school!

Later on in the day, my friend Christiano and I roamed the campus together.

We met 3 summers ago at Roundtop Music Festival, and it is so great to be reunited here!!

more excitement...  I think this was at the fact that school was over for the day!  haha

We only had one class today (I think I'm going to like this whole graduate student schedule-ness!), 

so we leisurely took care of some paperwork at the Registrar's, 

ran into Amulet at the Shepherd School of Music,

then all three of us walked (skipped) back to the Fighting Blueberries Apt for some lunch.

skipping to....

our apartment!!!!

I was a little bit shocked at first by how empty my schedule looked compared to how it has looked for the past...  well, like 16 years.

I mean, I'm only in 2 'academic' courses!

That has happened... never!

I went through a phase of "ohmygosh... where are my history courses?" because I am a big history nerd,

and have always had 1 or 2 history classes during my undergraduate degree.

 However, that lasted for a surprisingly short while,

and after that, I thoroughly enjoyed having time to practice alllllll day.  =D

This luxury, however, will be gone as soon as the Rice orchestra starts rehearsing,,,

Rice orchestra meets 3 times a week for 2 1/2 hours at a time!

That's a lot more orchestra than I have ever experienced,

but I am SO excited to be a part of such an incredible ensemble!

Well, off I go to practice some more  =)

I hope you had a wonderful Monday!

--Janny