Tomorrow I leave for a week at FAT Camp -- Fearless Audition Training, also called Fearless Performance Camp, run by Jeff Nelsen. My husband, daughter and daughter's boyfriend, along with three horns, a tuba, and assorted suitcases, will cram ourselves into our car to travel to Indiana University for a week of learning how to control nerves while performing in front of others. I have been looking forward to this since December, when I got very nervous performing Auf dem Strom and felt that affected my performance.
For the past several weeks we have been getting emails telling us what we need for the camp: a solo, five excerpts, "audition outfit," something non-horn related to perform at the talent show. Many of the attendees are college students and recent grads who are preparing for professional auditions. I am not, so I had to work up a movement of a Mozart concerto and five excerpts not entirely from scratch, but from a different place than my daughter, who is majoring in horn and practices several hours a day. I also needed to build up more endurance, since we will be playing a lot!
Once I decided on the 1st movement of the Mozart Horn Concerto #3, I realized I needed a cadenza. Since I had never performed it in public, I had did have one. So I wrote a short cadenza and asked my daughter to listen to it. She had several suggestions --"You need a bouncier section," and "You should have it go into minor somewhere," but I ended up leaving it as is for now. It's not bad for a first attempt and I want it to be on the short side. Then she said, "Are you playing from a transposed part? You're going to get nailed for that. Go download the Eb part from IMSLP." (Petrucci Music Library of music in the public domain) So I did that, and started practicing the concerto from the Eb part, however, my cadenza is still in F.
Challenges await! Fitting everything into the car! Performing an audition every day! The talent show! I'm still looking forward to this experience, but with somewhat more trepidation than back in December.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
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