July 30, 2015: practice Thursday

Yesterday Bryan & I made a trip to Winston Salem, where I spent most of the day rehearsing with our friend J.W. We are preparing a recital for this coming October; we'll be performing at Western Carolina University and at High Point University, where J.W. teaches. One of the pieces on the program is a new piece that Bryan wrote for us; it was great fun to read through that piece together for the first time, and to hear Bryan's reactions and suggestions.

We rehearsed for a total of about five hours, a morning rehearsal and an afternoon rehearsal with a lunch break in between. J.W. and I have been working together for about three years now (this is the second full program we'll be doing together), and are becoming accustomed to relying on just a few lengthy, rather intense rehearsals to get all our work done. We were able to get through the entire program, worked out some of the more challenging passages and made plans for our next rehearsal.

Chamber music rehearsals are one of my favorite things about being a pianist. I love trying out different interpretations of phrases, varying the dynamics, tempo, and articulation to see what sounds just right, and drawing from multiple musicians' perspectives and experience to make decisions about how the final performance will sound ... or, how we hope it will sound!