I am so proud of my practicing today. I nailed it. While PYPO camp was going on I also practiced my next camp music so hard and now I can’t wait for my next camp. My songs I’m practicing include a Mozart string quartet, a Corelli concerto, a Brandenburg concerto, and another quartet composed by Roger Zahab. They are really fun to practice.  I really enjoy practicing the Mozart quartet. I try to practice at least an hour and a half each day on my music plus an additional 30 minutes on my scales.  I am trying to do the three octave scales and I am having a hard time getting my E major three octave scale down, it sounds squeaky but I am working hard to perfect it.  The good news is most pieces don’t use the higher notes, at least most pieces I play now.  

After I perform the pieces in the concert I will post one piece from the first week and one from the second. But I will keep you up to date on my practicing.   I think the hard part will be to get my timing perfect when I play with the other campers, but I have the camp time to perfect that.  For now, I will just keep plugging away with my own parts.  
Until later…. Angelina 

Day 5 was concert day. I was so excited for the concert. We prepared so much and we sounded amazing. Before the concert we ran through the concert twice then had a pizza party. It was fun and yummy 🍕. After lunch we ran through the concert one more time before the actual concert. The concert went very well. You could hardly tell we only rehearsed for only 5 days. My favorite song was probably Egmont Overture or Can Can. Every piece we performed sounded great. I will be posting some videos of my pieces soon. 

Until later…. Angelina 

Day 4 was a very exciting day. Today I performed in the student recital. I was so nervous because I never practiced the piece with the piano. After I performed it I realized there was nothing to worry about because I got a standing ovation. I was so proud of myself.

After the student recital we had sectionals. During sectionals we had fiddling. During fiddling our coach rearranged us from a proper orchestra to a fiddle group by making a circle and putting the eldest players in the center (we had 4) and I was chosen to be one of the eldest players. The eldest players aren’t the oldest players  but the players who know and play the song the best.

After sectionals we had our aqua  war. An aqua war is when the orchestra goes outside and has a water gun battle between the strings and the rest of the orchestra. Sadly the strings lost but, I had a lot of fun. It was poring out during the water battle and everybody’s water guns were filled with cold hose water. It was freezing and I got soaked. 

What a fun day! Until later…. Angelina 

Day 3 was one of my favorite days at camp. Today I had a great thing happen to me. I auditioned for the student recital. I played the first violin part of a string quartet composed by Mozart With piano accompaniment from the director of  PYPO and the camp. I was so nervous because I never played that piece with accompaniment before and it’s a quartet and I was only playing it with the piano. I thought I did amazing but then I realized they only can  pick a few people from the violin section. When they announced who made it my name was called second in the violin section. I was so proud of myself.  I will play the recital piece to the campers and instructors on Thursday. 

Advancing through the week the group is sounding great. I can’t even wait for the concert Friday.  We are going to sound like we have practiced together for more than a week.

Until later…. Angelina 

Day 2 was fun. We did fiddling during sectionals. During this we had to learn the songs aurally. The songs we learned were the Old Bell Cow and A Horse Named Rover. I particularly loved learning those songs and performing them. They definitely are a different genre of music than classical but it is just as fun to learn and perform. Fiddling definitely is one of my favorite genres of music to perform.

When I got home I had to practice for my next camp which starts up after my PYPO camp. That camp is a Chamber Music Camp. It is so fun. We have 2 periods that we have coaches teach us a piece that we perform at the end of the week and 1 practice period. (For more information about the songs I am playing for  chamber camp and my thoughts on them I will post during my week in camp). 

Until later…. Angelina

The first day of camp was really fun. It was our first day practicing all of our pieces  together. Even though it was only our first time playing the pieces as a full group we sounded like we all played together before. 

I played the first violin part with 10 other participants. Our section worked very well together. There were second violins, violas, cellos, basses, flutes, clarinets, a bass clarinet, saxophones, and many different brass instruments included in the orchestra.

We played lots of team building games and ice breakers to get to know each other. They were really fun even though my team didn’t win some of the team building activities.
The first day was really fun and I can’t wait for day two of my first summer camp.

Until next time…. Angelina