weekend update

Wow, I actually had an interesting weekend, for once!

Saturday I wasn't planning on doing anything, but then my friend Bri invited me over for movies with some friends from the Medieval Studies department. I brought over a bottle of shiraz and some Fererro Roche dark chocolates. We watched American History X (a totally appropriate Valentine's day movie) and talked about racism, and then watched Music and Lyrics and talked about how good Hugh Grant looks without a shirt. (Conclusion: very.) Nothing exciting, but it was nice to be out with friends for Valentine's day.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here before, but I am in the NUIG Orchestra Society. We had a concert last Monday, actually, playing a Schubert symphony. Anyway, yesterday, we had an extra-long rehearsal. Usually we meet for 90 minutes on Monday nights, but Hugh (the conductor) wanted us to take a whole afternoon because we were learning new music. We're playing some Mozart pieces, which we will eventually combine with two choirs. The rehearsal was in Esker Monastery, about 20 minutes outside of Galway. That was cool. It was a beautiful secluded building, and the monks kept popping their heads in to tell us that the music was lovely. There were some snags, because none of the parts I had were actually written for B-flat clarinet. (NB: your garden-variety clarinet is in the key of B-flat and probably 98% of music is scored for it.) One was written for an A clarinet-- this isn't too unusual, I have run into A clarinet scores before. But two were written for C clarinet! I've never even seen a C clarinet. Transposing that is easy, though, and the pieces were really simple, so I was able to do it by sight. Transposing from A to B-flat is a lot more difficult, though, and the piece had four flats already. Luckily, Hugh knew someone who lived nearby that had an A clarinet, so we took a 10-minute break from rehearsal and went to get it. And man, that was so fun! I'd never played an A clarinet before. It's just a little bigger, so that took some getting used to, but the tone is just gorgeous. Hugh is going to try transposing that movement to B-flat, but I'm hoping that we can just find an A clarinet for me to play. Yay music.

Anyway, after rehearsal we all went back to Hugh's house, and he made dinner for all 25 of us! We ate lasagna and drank wine and hung out with his wife and two little kids. Overall, it was a really nice night. I'm really happy that I decided to join Orchestra Soc. I've been playing the clarinet for 13 years, and when I'm not in an ensemble I start to get stir-crazy.