Summer Music

Orchestra rehearsal at the Exmoor & Minehead Music Festival

This summer I had two very different music experiences. The first was participating in the Exmoor & Minehead Music Festival. I played violin in the orchestra and we had four concerts in six days with different repertoire for each concert. It was grueling and difficult work and I was stretched musically in many different ways. I was honored to be able to play alongside professional musicians from all over Great Britain, including musicians from the London Philharmonic Orchestra!

The second musical experience was attending a string orchestra course in Sherborne, England. I played under the baton of Robert Max, a professional cellist and conductor with the Royal Academy of Music and Oxford Symphony Orchestra. I made some very good musical contacts in Sherborne, including meeting Rodolfo Saglimbeni, one of the founding members of El Sistema in Venezuela and current conductor for La Orquesta Sinfónica Municipal de Caracas. He invited me to come to Venezuela and observe the teaching with El Sistema there after I told him about the Kenya National Youth Orchestra and Ghetto Classics in Nairobi.

Performing at the Canford School of Music in Sherborne

Of these two experiences, I definitely would go back and attend the Exmoor & Minehead Music Festival again. It was far more stretching and I learned far more in one week there than I did in Sherborne, despite meeting some very famous people at the music course! I have come to realize that doing a music course in orchestral works doesn't stretch me. It's easy to sit back and not work hard in an orchestra if not everyone is up to a standard that makes you work! I believe that I am at the point where I need to do chamber music or individual master classes in order to grow musically in attending music courses. Hopefully this year I can continue working on my repertoire for a Master's degree and attend a different music course in the summer.

In other news, I start teaching at my new job next week! I am a bit apprehensive to be teaching more classroom music than I am used to, so prayers that everything would go smoothly and I would get to know the kids quickly would help!

I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you established your faithfulness in heaven itself ... O Lord God Almighty, who is like you? You are mighty, O Lord, and your faithfulness surrounds you.

- Psalm 89:2,8