The End of second year – Santa Barbara

In the second half of May I was finishing last couple days of school full of final exams and juries and I could not wait to get out of the most humid place in the whole world - New York.

I was closing pretty much very successful year of a lot of good work, expecting to go home for three and half weeks to enjoy biking, hiking and other activities, just to get as disappointed as possible. When I got back, all I could enjoy was looking out of the window for constant rain and flooding. After all, that period of time just went by as quickly as one could wish and I got on the plane toward Santa Barbara.

Since I have been in Music Academy of the West last year, I thought there would be nothing to surprise me. But the intensity of the schedule was enormous. Right form the first day, we started rehearsal with orchestra for our first performance. We worked on very hard program including pieces like Debussy’s La Mer, Ravel’s La Valse and Bartok’s Miraculous Mandarin and on Saturday night we had the opening concert of the festival with Larry Rachleff. It was very stunning performance and we all enjoyed so much. During the week we also take lessons and chamber coachings and performer at master classes for distinguished artists such as Jerome Lowenthal, Midori, Brian Lewis and others. For the fourth week I was awarded with a concertmaster position for the biggest event of the festival. We had performance of Beethoven’s 8th Symphony and the enormous 5th Symphony by Shostakovich, conducted by Maestro Leonard Slatkin himself. It was such an incredible experience to work with him. Last two weeks few of my colleagues and I spent teaching local kids their instruments. It is so nice to see that there so many children who never had and actual lesson but still want to play and are interested in music.

I am very much enjoying my time in Santa Barbara!!!

 

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