Another Semester Done

Well here we are on Tuesday of finals week, a cacophony of recorders tooting in the hallways in anticipation of their Music 8 final. Boy that gets annoying real quick. But the semester is finally finished, all of our concerts are done and gone. It's been a pretty busy semester, especially the last few weeks where we had 10-12 concerts per week. Next semester is looking to be a little lighter, fortunately, but of course there's still time for folks to sign up for recitals, so you never know. 

I played the Sac State musical this spring, playing on bass for The Wiz. I was really concerned about my wrist, after Rent destroyed it last September. The doctor, incidentally, essentially told me I was getting older and needed to exercise it our and take ibuprofen. Ha! Well although my wrist was hurting throughout this run, with several high doses of drugs I was able to push through. It wasn't as bad as it was in Rent, but even now after 4 weeks have passed I still get jolts of pain sometimes when I turn my wrist a certain way. So, it may be very well that I have to retire from playing. It seems pretty clear that my wrist just isn't up to doing heavy playing anymore, and certainly not as infrequently as I tend to play. Xrays revealed nothing particularly wrong, so it may be time to hang it up and move on to other things. 

On another note, I did finally get a new composition work finished, a trio for oboe, clarinet and viola. The first movement was premiered at the end of April and went pretty well. The full three movements should be premiered in December. Now that this semester is done I can relax from the musical journal and musicology readings I had been doing for my grad class, and focus on reading through the entire Harry Potter series as I ride the bus to and from work. 

We'll see what this summer has in store, but as of right now I have a Disneyland trip planned for next week, a 10-day cruise to Alaska in July, and somewhere in there I need to start working on my final project work again, my symphony, so it can be performed next spring. In the fall I'll have one elective class, and then with my final project I should have finally earned the Masters degree that I began slowly working on in 2007. So bring it on, summer of 2011! I'm ready... Huh, it looks like it's going to rain outside. Are we sure it's the end of May??