Second semester at The Juilliard School

It feels like a week ago that I completed my first semester at The Juilliard School in December, but I’m halfway through my second semester, and it’s exam week now.

The end of last year was very busy. We took final exams in all subjects over the semester’s last two weeks, and I did very well. In addition, I was involved in an orchestra concert at the Alice Tully Hall with conductor Larry Rachleff of Rice University in Houston, and the preparation for it was intense. The concert was a huge success, and it was rated as one of the best performances of The Juilliard Symphony Orchestra in the last few years. Plus I was making a DVD recording for the greatest and most famous violin contest, the Queen Elisabeth International Musical Competition in Brussels, at the same time. The DVD has recordings of pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Niccolo Paganini, and Pablo de Sarasate. I received a letter from the competition saying that my recording was judged worthy and admitted to the competition last week. It’s a huge success for me, and I’m really looking forward to Brussels.

I have a few new subjects this semester. Piano lessons are over; as for arts, we have moved on to the political realm, and I have added Music History and a chamber ensemble. I had no idea that politics could be of interest to me, but it’s been fun discussing the developments in Libya and how Aristotle or John Locke would view them, and then debating away at every lesson only to arrive at the conclusion that an ideal political situation has never existed and never will. Music History for this semester is just a quick and brief overview of events and we will be covering it in more detail next semester. For my new chamber ensemble, we formed a clarinet quintet, and our tutor is Charles Neidech, who is currently considered the best clarinetist. Our orchestra will play the Avery Fisher Hall this Friday with Alan Gilbert, the Chief Conductor of the New York Philharmonic, conducting. It has been an amazing experience watching and working with the conductor who leads the world’s best orchestra. At the end of January, I took tests for two summer festivals, in Chicago and in Santa Barbara, California. Today, I received a letter saying that I was admitted to the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara with a full grant, so I will have the opportunity to study and work with the greatest personalities of the music world in the summer as well.