Musical Journey

One thing that I will take away from this class was that people who go orchestral concerts are not as snobby or as mean as a lot of people make them to be. When I was a kid, I went to my first orchestral concert with my piano teacher and some of her other students. They were kind of mean to me and I couldn’t really get along with them rather because they were more of a classical music’s kind of kid instead of a diverse music kind of kid. Since the first experience I had always wanted to go back and experience it one more time but, I was scared that people would judge me for not knowing a whole lot about classical music or composers. I really enjoyed the concerts and I plan to go to more in the future. I learned some etiquette on how to attend these kinds of performances from this class and what to expect when it came to dress code. This experience impacted me because I was always nervous to attend these kinds of concerts. I also, thought that these concerts were always going to be ve...

The Symphony Tacoma held a concert on November 23, 2019 that featured George Li playing Enchanting Rachmaninoff. This was played at the Pantages Theater and the conductor of the performance was Sarah Loannides. The composer that create the piece George Li played was Rachmaninoff. He was born 1943 in Russia; he played the piano and was a conductor during the romantic era. During a period of his life he fell into depression because there was a negative response to his first symphony. However, he was able to get out of the depression and created his piano concerto no. 2. After creating his piano concert no. 2, he conducted for the Bolshoi Theatre. He ended up moving to the United States because of the Russian Revolution. His full-time job during this time was conducting and playing the piano, he didn’t have time to compose any of his own pieces. As a young child he was taught how to play the piano by a teacher who studied at the music school at Saint Petersburg. Rachmaninoff could r...

A concert by the Pacific Lutheran University was held on November 22, 2019. It was a steel Band and percussion Ensembles. This concert was directed by Miho Takekawa and the performers were students that were apart of the percussion program. There was a student conduct, this was something seniors who were about to graduate had to do before they graduated. There were two special performers that were friends of Ms. Takekawa named Rebekah Ko and Storm Benjamin. They were professional percussion player. There were many different pieces and composers that were played during this concert, so I will talk about my top three composers that I had liked from the concert. One was named Michael Udow, he was born 1949 in Detroit, Michigan. He attended the University of Illinois and graduated with the first doctoral degree in percussion performance. Udow is known for his unique and complex rhythms in his composition. After working with the Santa Fe Opera, he retired and decided to become a ful...

The Seattle Symphony hosted a concert called Beethoven & ravel on November 25 th , 2019. There were four groups that performed at the concert, String Quartet No.2, Oboe Trio in C Major, and Trois Po`emes de st`ephane Mallarm`e. The concert performed pieces from Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Ravel, and Dvorak. History: Felix Mendelssohn was a composer that was born in Germany on 1809, he played the piano, organ, and was a conductor. He played the piano from a young age and was taught by very well-known teachers during that time that had studied under amazing figures of music. He created many pieces over the course of his life, one of his most popular pieces was A Midsummer Nights Dream. Here is a performance of his piece. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geiGhHR1-Wo  When Mendelssohn was nine, he has his first every public concert. He played chamber music, normally his performances where private at home with his very wealthy parents. He started ...

The Pacific Lutheran University preformed a jazz concert that was contributed to the women who were composer of jazz pieces and their history. This concert was performed on November 8 th , 2019. The director of the concert was Cassio Vianna, the performers were students from the University. Some of the students that were performing were students that were studying music, while there were some students that were not apart of the music program that also performed at the concert. The composers that were featured at the concert were Maria Schneider, Mary Lou Williams, Ellen Rowe, Patty darling, and Carla Bley. The concert was very interesting and educational, there were many women who were tribute during the performance.   Maria Schneider is an American female composer that was born in 1960. She studied music during her youth and went to the University of Minnesota, Eastman School of Music, and the University of Miami. Ms. Schneider composes music that mix a lot of diff...

Hello my name is Nikki, My musical background is from elementary school to sophomore of high school I was always involved with some kind of musical program. In elementary school, I was introduced to different types of composers, dancing, and actually reading basic musical notes. I began to express interest in playing an instrument; specifically, the violin. When middle school came around, I signed up to join the middle school orchestra. That was when I had my first experience with actually playing the violin and playing in concerts for an audience. After middle school, I went on to join my high school orchestra, but after sophomore year I stopped playing all together because I was trying to get used to being in running start (college during high school). I am now back to playing the violin again and trying to reteach myself how to play/ read musical notes. I have been watching a lot of YouTube videos on how to play again, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QS8uJVIjZA to give my...