A Continual Feast

Um.

Briefly:

1) FavoriteBoy played harpsichord in a concert my teacher played/conducted with the Lexington Sinfonietta. I was so proud of him I almost burst into pieces. He repaired the school harpsichord himself; while all the other folks at the school were discussing financial matters about repair, he just poked around a bit, and emerged with a working instrument! Then my teacher asked him if he'd play a Bach concerto with him in this particular concert, so FavoriteBoy loaded the harpsichord into a friend's van and went and played the concert. He did a fantastic job.

2) After orchestra rehearsal tonight, I am going to the airport to pick up my mom!

3) Tomorrow evening at 7:30 pm is our orchestra concert, in which I am a featured soloist. Orchestra. Me. Standing alone up front. Playing a solo. And yeah, I played it on the little tour last fall, but somehow this is different. By 'different,' what I really mean is 'more scary.'

4) We have had a cellist here at school for the past month! She is a student of my teacher's wife, and has been spending her college interterm here at Gordon, playing in our orchestra. The best part is... Me on 1st violin plus Roommate on 2nd violin plus Melissa on viola plus one fabulous and agreeable cellist equals A REAL LIVE STRING QUARTET! We have been playing Mendelssohn Op. 13 and I have had a radical conversion experience from feeling ambivalent about string quartets (having hardly ever playing anything of the sort) to being wildly, exquisitely, passionately in love with string quartets. I am convinced that there can be very few things better in this life than playing string quartets, and most particularly, Mendelssohn. We performed the first movement of the Mendelssohn in musicianship on Monday, and people seemed to like it a lot... perhaps because we enjoyed it so much ourselves. After the orchestra concert tomorrow night, our cellist is leaving, and there shall be much sorrow. BUT there is a possibility that we can continue to play together - and wouldn't that be swell.

5) If anything is better than string quartets, it is FavoriteBoy. He gave me a watch for Valentine's Day. It is beautiful.