Giulianzo's Plato’s Academy of Florence and the Confraternity of the Magi discussion

I know that a lot of members of this group are musicians or simply love music. How is everyone's music life right now? Anyone heard a good new song? Any performances approaching? Have you written anything new or made a new arrangement of another piece? I'd love to hear about it.

I just had a concert! Like today. We played Holst's Brook Green Suite and Mozarts Divertimento in C (but arranged so it was in D) and some other boring piece.

I'm also playing Mozarts Violin Concerto #3 and it's sounding very nice! And I just read Beethoven's triple concerto. It was fun but hard ;)

What about you?

I had a festival the other day. I performed "Think of Me" from "Phantom of the Opera" as well as "The Singer" by Michael Head. That second piece was rather difficult; I've been told it is actually a college-level song. I got superior on both pieces. Then I sang "Think of Me" again at our school talent show and won third place. I also have a solo in a choir performance that should have been a few days ago but was changed due to inclement weather. So that's coming up, and I have to perform it again at our school concert and at a TMEA conference. (I'm a little worried about that second one.) Plus I have an audition for opera camp coming up next month.

I haven't actually worked on any pieces lately, but I'm going through one choral piece and editing and I'm going to try writing something for a horn, probably a trumpet but maybe a saxophone.

The Beethoven piece is for pros but the Mozart one I'm playing is like for average people when they're like 16. It's very popular among younger Suzuki kids. I was playing it today before my concert and someone retorted "I played that when I was 7!" And I thought "whatever I published a book" so...

I haven't written anything but I finished translating an opera!!

Yes, people always seem to catch it when you perform simple pieces, but rather do they appreciate the difficult ones.

Also, that's great! It must have taken quite some time to translate an entire opera's text; I would never be able to translate just one aria. Which opera was it? Who by?

The opera is called "Una Cosa Rara ossia la bellezza ed onestà" (a rare thing, or beauty and honest). It's by Martìn y Soler - one of Mozarts contemporaries. The libretto is by Lorenzo da Ponte (Le nozze/Don Giovanni/Così fan tutte).

I posted some of the arias on my writing page if you want to see :)

I know Da Ponte's work. :) And I think I'll give that a look. Thanks.

Awesome :)
I love da Ponte !! He's my favorite author.

He's definitely written some amazing things!

I have his memoirs :) they're hilarious.

Oh my, I can only imagine. :)

There's one part where his tutor went to slap him, and his father walked in the room and got so angry that he took the tutor by the hair and threw him down the steps.

"And there was no more talk of Latin for some years after that."

Lol. :)

I wish someone had suggested that Mick Jagger do a hard rock version of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. That would be great.

Oh, I love that song. :)

I just played it with one of my friends :) on www.wqxr.org I read an article about 'best rock renditions of classical pieces'. My favorite was "Der Hölle rache kocht in meinem Herzen" from Die Zauberflöte on electric guitar.

Wow. I most certainly am in the dark; I didn't even realize that people did that. :) That's really cool.

I just signed up for Ithavca College's summer program! I hope I get in :)

I hope you do, too! I might have already mentioned this, but I'm auditioning for a conservatory at Opera Memphis. I'm on the younger end of the spectrum for qualifying ages, and they only accept up to 25 people total. There are five voice parts, so no more that five people per voice part. Auditions are so nerve-wracking!!!

I'm so bad at auditions!! I always mess up!

I KNOW!!! And I always mess up on something I can do perfectly while practicing.

Me too!!!!!

So I had a solo in a state music conference. It was okay. I didn't run off the stage in fright so that was good. :)

Ha! Congrats :) I just had a competition/festival I had to play in... now I'm playing The Devil's Trill 3rd movement... it's so hard!!

Have you got it mastered yet? Oh, and good news! I made it into the opera conservatory that I auditioned for this summer!!! We get to perform a whole operetta, which is awesome.

NOOOOO WAAAYYY am I done with it!

That's so cool!

I just saw La Cenerentola at the Met and I met Juan Diego Flórez, Joyce DiDonato (those two were really just a handshake and an autograph) and Luca Pisaroni (I had a whole conversation with him) and Pietro Spagnoli.

Well good luck as you keep working on it. And that's awesome!!!

Thanks! And my violin teacher made me read through the whole piece yesterday and I swear my hands were going to fall off after.

I know what you mean. I don't play violin but I do get sore when I have to do songs that require a lot of agility.

Yep - like 'non più mestà'! Oh my god it scares me!!