I will just say:  Strauss Opera is hard.

Come see us perform!  I play pretty much throughout the whole performance.  My fingertips are sore, my back aches, and my brain is exhausted.  Good times!

I was going to run outside today, but it’s raining and I decided to postpone until tomorrow (was going to rest tomorrow, so it works out).  Yesterday I did an awful treadmill workout suggested by Mike:  set the incline at 6% (or up to 8%), run for 25 seconds, rest for 35 seconds.  Repeat for 30 minutes.  I ran at 6.2 mph, slightly faster than I usually run on the treadmill.  You want to be able to keep it up for the whole time without slowing down.  I found 6.3 mph to be just a little too challenging (crazy, right?).  Anyway, if you want to try it, choose a speed that works for you.  It wasn’t so bad, but mentally was really tough to keep it up for so long.

I spent the running time writing thank you notes instead.  I got 10 done!  My hand was really starting to cramp, so I’ll do more another time.  I need to practice anyway.

We got our professional photos from the wedding on Monday.  I want to continue my "wedding recap" posts, but I don’t have time to do a nice one right now.  If it’s okay though, I’ll share a few more pictures here!  Sarah Crowder did a wonderful job 🙂

My handsome groom!

My gorgeous Maggie Sottero dress…

I haven’t written much lately about violin, so let’s do that now!

I’ve been quite busy racing and wedding planning, but I’ve also been busier with work. 

I’ve got about 20 students right now, and they are all challenges in different ways.  I currently have students from age 3 up to adults with grandchildren, and they are each wonderful yet difficult to teach in their own way.  Each student has their unique personality and my goal in lessons (in addition to technique first, technique first, technique first) is to bring out their personality and really let them feel like the lesson is something special for them during the week, and hopefully that leads to them feeling that the violin is something special to them in their life.  Does that make sense?  Really that’s my goal—for students to love the violin like I do.

I do love playing the violin.  Saturday I was doing some recording with the Ocarina Trio and while I was playing it occurred to me that playing the violin is something I do really well!  Running, something I am working hard at.  Violin, something I worked hard at for a long long time (and continue to do so to an extent) but now I do it really well, and generally it is very easy for me. 

Sometimes I don’t feel that I do many things well.  Violin, I feel like I do well.  When I’m not injured…

And a reminder: 

Chamber Project St Louis

Upcoming concerts:  November 3 and 4.  Come check us out!  I’m playing in the Mozart Piano Quartet in the second half.  We’re in the middle of rehearsals now, and I think it’s going to be really good.  It’s a beautiful piece.

Last night I played at Winter Opera’s Masquerade Ball.  It was a four course meal at Dominic’s in Clayton with music in between the courses.  Most of the music was singing of course, but Gina Galati (director and friend) asked if I could play with some of the other musicians for one of the sets.

I played with Tony (Antonio) and Jen.  We did Haydn’s London Trio no 1.  I was more nervous about talking than playing, but the talking went fine.  I even made a joke that everybody laughed at!  (We realized that Haydn was really light music compared to the Verdi and Puccini people were singing, so I said something about how I hoped they weren’t too upset by our repertoire choice being fairly lame in comparison.  Everybody laughed.)

We tried for awhile to get a good photo.  There were five photos with my eyes shut, and a couple with Jen laughing hysterically.  This was our last try, and I suggested everybody try to look serious…I wanted to commemorate our not wearing running clothes or all black.

Cheesecake.

It was a masquerade ball.  This mask was on the table so naturally I had to try it on.

It was a bad picture night.  I took about ten and had other people take another ten.  Everything was unusable…maybe I wasn’t terribly photogenic tonight.  (I have to blame myself a little since my eyes were shut in quite a few of them.)

However, the performance was successful, I think, and the singers were fantastic!  Overall it was very enjoyable.

Today we had a little photo shoot with the new "core members" of Chamber Project St Louis (that’s me and Melissa.)  We did photos of each of us, and then a bunch of group photos.

Obviously these are not the good photos, but more "behind the scenes."  The "good photos" look pretty good.  Hopefully I’ll have some to share with you in the near future, but I was pretty pleased with how most of it turned out.  It was a fun afternoon, and I’m really excited to be part of the group.

Basically they have asked a few of us to join as "core members" as they transition into a non-profit group.  As core members, we will be first call for pieces that require our instruments as well as giving input into programming and whatever else we want to help with.  Money wise we are entering into a profit sharing type arrangement, which basically means this year I won’t make much (though I will encourage you all to come to the shows!) but perhaps in the future. 

Our first program is at 7:30 pm on September 8.  It’ll be GREAT.  I’ll be sitting up all straight and stuff, and honestly it should be a fabulous program.  Go ahead and mark your calendars!  Contact me with questions 🙂

You can follow me on twitter or follow Chamber Project St Louis to stay updated as well.  @hannahviolin or @cpstl. 

Thanks to a friend for screen capping this.  Tonight was the internet Ocarina trio concert.  It went well!  Thanks to everybody for watching and perhaps purchasing CD’s (I’m new to the trio so I’m not on them.)  I hope to play with the group again, and I’ll keep you posted on any more performances.  Those of you who missed it, well, you missed a great concert 🙂