Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 at
9:36 am
The auditions for season 3 were held on August 29 at the Yamaha center here and yours truly was again one of the judges. There were more entries this year so I was looking forward to it and hoping to see some new talents. However, to put it mildly, I was disappointed with what I heard and saw. I suppose I’m going to receive some flak for this but I’m going to be honest and try to offer some constructive criticism here.
Firstly, a lot of the contestants from the junior and senior sections suffered from nerves. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again—nothing destroys your playing faster than nerves. It’s easy for me to tell the contestants to relax and enjoy themselves; after all I’m not in the hot seat. But if you let your nerves overwhelm you, you’re in big trouble. Everybody experiences some nerves before a competition such as this, but you have to learn to keep it under control. I heard a lot of runaway trains, where the tempi got faster and faster as their nervousness edged up; what a pity.
Secondly, some contestants decided to get creative and added in their vocal abilities for this competition. Bad move. As far as I’m concerned, this is Piano Idol. Moreover they didn’t think about the balance between their vocals and the piano (they sang without amplification so I could barely hear the vocals with the piano being played so loudly) You can’t just throw things into the pot like this and hope and pray it’ll work, it won’t! A good chef doesn’t do this, so why should you? And if you really want to sing, you should enter in the Ensemble category, where singing is permitted.
Thirdly, most of the contestants didn’t have a winning attitude. People, this is already season 3 and you don’t enter this competition just for the sake of entering. You need to motivate yourself to do the best you can, and you need to have that winning streak inside of you. Your teachers too, should help with this.
After saying all this, I was impressed with the performances in the Ensemble section. The contestants here were more at ease and I pretty much enjoyed judging them.
I dunno, perhaps it was my presence that made all the contestants go haywire. Well I have some good news for you—I won’t be judging the Finals on October 10, so there. If you’re one of the lucky ones who qualified for the Finals, you have one less thing to worry about!
Tags:
piano idol
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Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 at
5:44 pm
It has been a long time since I last posted a video here so I thought now would be an appropriate moment. This is the Prelude to Le Tombeau de Couperin by Maurice Ravel. I’d like to thank my wonderful friend Crystal for encouraging me to “get on with it.” Actually she wanted to see my fingers fly so Crystal, I hope you enjoy this video. And the same to all my other readers too.
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) was a French composer who is perhaps best known for his orchestral work Bolero (it was featured in the 1979 movie 10 starring Dudley Moore, Julie Andrews, and Bo Derek. It was used for a lovemaking scene, *blush*) I’ve loved Ravel’s music since my days at the University of Arizona. Although his musical output wasn’t extensive (his complete piano works fill just two CD’s; his orchestral works three) nonetheless he wrote very captivating and original music. I remember my Orchestration professor telling me that Ravel ranks up in the top three of best classical orchestrators, the other two being Berlioz and Rimsky-Korsakov. So there you have it.
Tags:
Classical music,
Le Tombeau de Couperin,
Ravel,
University of Arizona
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Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at
9:12 pm
Seeing as Valentine’s Day is drawing near, allow me to present this clip of yours truly playing Dream a little dream of me. The lyrics are displayed below. Songs like this one are all about romance—and I love it. Not the “let’s get the sex part going” kind of thing, nope. And a kiss is the most romantic thing between two lovers, period. Enjoy, and Happy Valentine’s Day.
Stars shining bright above you;
Night breezes seem to whisper “I love you.”
Birds singing in the sycamore tree.
Dream a little dream of me.
Say nighty-night and kiss me;
Just hold me tight and tell me you’ll miss me.
While I’m alone, blue as can be,
Dream a little dream of me.
Stars fading but I linger on, dear—
Still craving your kiss.
I’m longing to linger till dawn, dear,
Just saying this…
Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you—
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you.
But in your dreams, whatever they be,
Dream a little dream of me.
Tags:
dream a little dream of me,
piano,
Valentine's Day
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Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at
10:54 pm
It’s that time of year once more and yours truly was again at the helm of the piano to accompany the E & O Nightingales singing Christmas carols for the lighting of the Christmas Tree at the hotel lobby. By the way, December here started out not with snow, but with an enormous thunderstorm just before the event started. Here’s one of my pictures.
Here’s my piano and keyboard setup, a Korg PA-50 on top of the piano. I used the Korg most of the time, because the noise levels were extremely high and the piano couldn’t be heard.
General Manager Michael Saxon (my boss) gave his opening speech, and then Miss Mazeta conducted the E & O Nightingales for the singing of the Christmas carols. Yes, the choir was comprised of only ladies this year, but they sang their hearts out and I was very proud to have accompanied them. And word is that they will be doing some occasional caroling in the hotel between now and Christmas.
Up and coming violinist Koay Zhi Tong captivated and impressed the audience with two Christmas carols played on her electric violin. Zhi Tong was also a finalist in this year’s Piano Idol. This young lady’s one to watch!
And finally just when I was finishing my dinner, the E & O Nightingales came by for theirs, so the end result was me (the thorn huh) taking a photo with them. Well done, ladies!
Tags:
Christmas Tree,
E & O Hotel,
Lighting ceremony,
piano
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Sunday, November 29th, 2009 at
11:53 pm
Alright, I confess—maybe it was that sojourn at the Coffee Bean last week that triggered the sentimentalist in me. After listening to them playing all those Christmas songs sung by the likes of Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Judy Garland, Nat King Cole, etc. I emerged feeling a wee bit woozy, but it was a nice, warm feeling inside me (and yeah, maybe the Ice Blended Coffee contributed to it too) Anyways, what better way to express it or let it out but through music, and so here’s my own personal recording and arrangement of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. This song was first sung by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis. The lyrics were criticized as being too depressing in its original draft, so songwriter Hugh Martin made several changes. Here are the tweaked lyrics, in case you want to sing along with my playing:
Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
From now on,
our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yuletide gay,
From now on,
our troubles will be miles away.
Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.
Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
And have yourself A merry little Christmas now.
I recorded all the backing tracks myself, putting in a sad muted trumpet first, followed by another solo trumpet. And I have another confession to make—I had actually wanted to modulate a half-step higher near the end, from C major to C sharp major. But as I was recording it, I detoured to A flat major instead. It sounded different but I liked it, so I left it in. Hope you enjoy this performance of mine.
If you’d like to listen to my piano-only version, it’s online here.
May the coming Christmas season fill all our hearts with love, peace, and joy.
Tags:
Coffee Bean,
Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Music,
piano
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Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at
10:43 am
November 23 marks the birthday of a wonderful friend I’ve managed to reconnect with recently. Rather than presenting the birthday song here, I’ve decided to rustle up Somewhere Over the Rainbow instead. No flashy licks or wild runs, because this song doesn’t need it. It’s just one of those melodies that speaks for itself.
Happy birthday, my dear friend. I’ll meet you somewhere over the rainbow, someday 
Tags:
Somewhere over the rainbow
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Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at
9:22 am
I’ve thought and toyed with the idea of creating another blog just for my musical ramblings; I think about this most often when I’m in the pool, in-between laps. And the mind (at least my mind) sure is funny, it tries to cook up excuses…so I was saying to myself something like “Nah, it’s too difficult, I have no idea how to create a new self-hosted blog…” This went on for a couple of days and then I decided I had to do something. I IMed a friend or two, picked their brains, and scoured the web. And good grief, it’s so easy to create a new blog when you already have a web host. All I had to do was go to Fantastico in my control panel, select WordPress, fill in some details, and before I could even make a cup of java my new WordPress blog had been installed and was ready to go. Yay!
No flourish of trumpets, no drum rolls, no swank parties at the Ritz-Carlton…well maybe someday. Anyway, I hope you’ll check out my new blog and see what you think. I’m gonna chronicle my musical teaching career and my cocktail piano stints throughout the past 25 years. Yeah it’ll do wonders for the old grey matter. It will also keep me out of the devil’s paws, muahaha! Read it and please let me know what you think. I thrive on comments. And leftovers too.
Tags:
blog,
WordPress
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