The plan made perfect sense. My daughter had been through it all before for undergrad, so she knew exactly what to do. The culmination of a gap year meant tons of free time for her to create a relaxed schedule of lessons, practices, rehearsals, recordings, sample lessons, and applications. There was even time for a summer festival.
And then the injury. Famous violin teacher at festival said her setup was wrong and changed it. Four days later, pain. Regular teacher came for her festival stint, and daughter showed the new setup. Teacher said it was an injury waiting to happen, at which point daughter revealed it had already happened.
New setup dismissed, injury retained. She made it through the festival, came home, seemed okay, and the injury flared. She scaled back on practice hours, went to doctor, who said three weeks no playing. She ignored him, and two days later, pain came back worse than before. So, violin away. Three weeks. Then resumed a bit at a time.
Her teacher, initially positive, announced that she had lost her sound. She wasn’t sure about forging ahead with applications. She still wasn’t 100% injury free but in the end decided to go for it. After months of less-than-optimal and shorter practice times, and weeks of layoff, she had three weeks to prep. The teacher went away for a week; daughter went with her and had daily lessons around teacher’s rehearsals – many hours. Violin boot camp. Half-way through teacher said she was staging a comeback and told her she had “grit.”
On the recording front, she pushed the dates out as late as possible, but good spaces were hard to come by. Made do with some not-so-hot venues – one a large dance studio.
Then the accompanist rehearsal – accompanist fumbling, wrong notes, wrong rhythms. Desperate text to fantastic pianist landed her a single recording session with him last Wednesday (still had to pay the rejected accompanist). She had time for two takes of each of the first two movements of her concerto. Took the second take for both and called it a day. Pianist said she sounded like herself. Daughter not sure.
The other material was sandwiched in little sessions on Nov. 29 and 30. On Nov. 30, 7:00 PM space was insanely boomy. Quick phone call to another place a few blocks away. Trudged over at 8:00. Too dead, but better than boomy. Could hear articulations. Recorded until 10:30. Lyft home.
Applications all night and all day on December 1. Last completed at 11:56 PM. Two schools that emailed with last-minute extensions were completed the next day. 12 applications. 10 with prescreens.
So. She’s not happy with her recordings, but she did her level best under the circumstances.
With her preferred recording of the Bach Adagio (from the G minor sonata), done in the one nice space she had, she realized had strayed a little far into the baroque territory (as she’d been taught, mind you, from her teacher, who knows what she’s talking about). However, her teacher had recommended a more hybrid approach to the recordings; my daughter did put on some vibrato but didn’t realize she had retained a baroque approach to the rhythm – accelerations on runs kind of thing. She did re-record it, but in the end preferred the original – felt it was more beautiful – and so decided to go with it.
On the upload files, with one school, the piece and movement was labelled correctly but not the tempo marking – a result of rushing and being up for more than 24 hours straight. EXTREMELY embarrassing. Oh, well.
Now, she’s in wait-and-see mode like everyone else. Fingers crossed.
Best of luck to everyone else going through this process!
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), and she does sound very determined. I’m sure that it will all work out well for her, though, and I wish her the best of outcomes. Keep us posted!