WTF-Beta

Wabbit

As I’ve written about here, I take lessons at my uni’s music school, and my teacher last year was a doctoral student in piano performance. This is her last semester (and sadly, I’m working with someone else now, so she’s not my teacher anymore). The doctoral students have to do some specific number of recitals as part of their graduation requirements, and there are various rules about the recitals, I don’t know all the details but some of the recitals are “lecture recitals,” where they play repertoire along with a lecture about the music and composer etc. Others are traditional performances, some solo, some with other instruments. Last semester I attended one of her recitals with a trio (violin and cello) and that was sublime.

So she recently played her last recital before graduating. This was a solo performance, here is the program:

It was so great! I loved all of it, and she plays so, so well, it’s just such a treat to listen. Also I had a nice seat with a good sightline to her and her hands

It was especially nice to hear the Beethoven live (which I’ve never heard live before). A lot of the recitals at the music school have programs which I’m less familiar with, but this program was much more familiar to me than many I’ve attended, so that makes it nice as well. And the Beethoven Sonata is so well-known, it’s just a treat to hear it performed live.

The Glass etudes were great too, I’ve actually not heard Glass performed live either. My goodness, Glass is just hand torture. But not for her, obviously.

BTW each recital program has to be approved by a committee. If my understanding is correct, the performer has to choose/assemble the program, and then get it approved, and sometimes there are changes required etc. I don’t know about this one, but the inclusion of Glass was a little bit surprising to me, but I thought it worked really, really well as a program.

And the piano sounded divine.

All around, a really lovely program.

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Disgusting.

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@Bernard said:

Ford Pinto.

Btw when I first went to Japan, the smoking regulations were quite loose. No smoking in school classrooms, thankfully, but most other workplaces were unrestricted. At my first workplace (a junior high), they had decided not to allow smoking in the teachers room because there had been a pregnant teacher, and then after she had her baby, they just kept the policy in place. But for my second job, I was a traveling teacher based out of the board of education, which was inside city hall. The city hall policy was that you could smoke in designated areas during the breaks, so before 8am, from 10-10:15am, during lunch, from 3-3:15pm and then after 5pm. The designated area was right by my desk

Fortunately, I was rarely there because I was usually at some school somewhere. After my second or third year in that job, the national law changed and then smoking wasn’t allowed anywhere in city hall — yay!!

My experience was not as dramatic as @jon-nyc 's or @bernard 's (and I believe I wrote about this at the old WTF) but I was living in Japan at the time, so it was just before 10pm. I was brushing my teeth and my husband called me into the living room where the news was on TV. (We didn't have a computer at home at that point). I couldn't process what was happening at first, it seemed like a movie, and we watched the rest of it unfold in real time just like the rest of the world. Then I couldn't get a call through to the US for what seemed like forever, I didn't know where my parents were, whether any of my family happened to be traveling (in NYC or elsewhere)... I have family in many places in Western PA, and the Japanese news didn't use any specific place names in their reporting about that part of it. That made me almost lose my mind.

I think being overseas for 9/11 was maybe somewhat similar to being abroad when a family member dies. I felt isolated from the US, and I remember feeling alienated from the Japanese people that were around me (esp at work) in ways I never had before.

In the months that followed I went crazy trying to get American flags to decorate our house. (Which, in a small town in Japan, and before the days of ordering everything online, was not very easy to do). It was another year or more before I made it back to the US for a visit, and when I finally returned, I found a country I did not recognize.

I had never been on a plane until sometime in college, and I'm pretty sure it was after the smoking ban was in place.

I do remember as a child joining my brothers in hounding my parents, who both smoked. We hated it! And they both eventually quit, my mother said our continual complaining was part of the motivation.

@wtg Love it!!

Esp. the colorful cars!!

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@Mik said:

unless I had a need for it. They're all tools.

I really just what it because it would be so much better for looking at music.

That’s not enough of a reason, or enough “uses” for the tools it has. Ah well, it’s fun to pretend.

Hot

@AdagioM said:

The large screen is only relatively large compared to a regular phone. Probably not big enough to read sheet music at the piano.

I have an iPhone Pro Max and I sometimes read music from it, not for learning purposes of course! But music I'm already playing. (When I go somewhere and I know I'm going to be playing, I take my iPad).

I would love to have a larger screen for those incidental times, or when I'm just wanting to look at a score for reference. Being able to do that without having to carry around a regular tablet or mini tablet would be great. I'm sure I would love it for that purpose.

But probably not anything else!

Plus, I can't imagine having an iPhone without a case, and I can't figure out how a case is supposed to work with the foldable!

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