Wintergreen 2010

First off, I'm not a writer, which will be painfully evident by this website. Did I want to start this blog? Not really. Do I have loving family members that insisted that I do this? Yes =)
Now it's a competition to see which blog is more interesting: mine, or rach's Chicago/recent NYC endeavor.
Perhaps why I've never felt that keeping a blog has been necessary before now is that I've never done anything interesting before now... except going to Poland in 2005, before I knew this technology existed.

I'll briefly start with what I'm doing, although 100% of my readers already know. I am just about to finish day #2 at the 2010 Wintergreen Summer Music Academy, held at the Wintergreen resort near Charlottesville, VA. Getting to this place has been no small task... my adventure started back in February when I submitted my application to the festival/academy. I hadn't ever heard of Wintergreen before, but found it in a google search for fun/interesting things to do with my summer. Getting the phone call from Joe Nigro (amazing violist and fearless academy director) that I had been accepted was a complete blowaway shocker, as I had recently been rejected by 7 grad schools and 2 other summer festivals. I won't go into that here, but the point is that now I'm here spending a month in the beautiful mountains of Virginia.

And what a beautiful mountain we're on!


Yesterday I checked in and met my house-mates-- there are seven of us living in a 5-bedroom house-- Me, another composer, 4 of the 5 members of a string quintet, and our intern watching over everyone on the top floor. We had a 2-hour info meeting, followed by another 2-hour meeting with the 6 composer students at Larry Alan Smith's house. Dr. Smith teaches at the Hartt school during the school year, and knows of other BJU grads who have studied at his school... I'm feeling that I will be going to Hartt in 2011 because of my recent connection =)

One other important bit was getting my music to the violist for the string quartet I composed for... come to my concert on July 20 at 7:30 pm! He is brand new to the academy, since the other viola student supposed to come got diagnosed for depression last week and had to skip the festival... being a musician, I should be in the hospital right there with him! Just kidding... sometimes. My quartet is complaining tonight that they tried my piece for the first time and can't get it together... so I will go play it for them on my computer in the morning and help explain it away.

After a wonderful 3 hour morning session with Michael White (teacher at Juilliard), we loaded into a van, drove to charlottesville, and had a 2 hour masterclass with Judith Shatin, teacher at U of Virginia. This is not a typical day... it was on the lighter side. Pretty soon we're supposed to have private lessons, more masterclasses, concerts to attend, and hopefully scoot some free time to compose somewhere into the packed day.

On the way back from Charlottesville we stopped at an art exhibit which will change throughout the 4 weeks. Tonight's theme was Viennese Cafe's in the 19th and early 20th century.


Tomorrow we will be visited by the Austrian ambassador to the USA, and he will talk about the impact of his country's culture on America.

Musicians are weird in general, and I also found out that composers are too... the six of us talked about the nerdiest things at dinner tonight, that would have 99.9% of the population screaming and running after 10 minutes.

When not breathing/eating/sleeping music, I want to take advantage of the fitness center, swimming pool, golf course, zip line, etc.
I'll try to take more pictures of this place and post them soon!