Peter Stark weekend

Wow, what a weekend...
I was kinda stressing out because I had to work loads... Friday was my normal admin day: 9-4:45, then we had orchestra 5-8. Saturday was work 1-8. Today was work 10-6. Mental times! It's coz we had Peter Stark, conductor from Royal Academy/Royal College of Music and he was coming for the weekend to conduct the youth orchestra playing Dvorak's New World Symphony. So we've been rehearsing it for ages... had 2 of his post-grad students come and take a few rehearsals and then he was here this weekend.

What an amazing and inspirational guy! He's just got such a warmth and brought a whole new meaning to music this weekend. His precision, yet fun-ness of the whole thing was remarkable. Like sometimes the rehearsals were a bit boring, yet coz he's so amazing there was just something about me hanging on his every word.

I think we learnt a lot from him as an orchestra and really hope it continues to improve our playing. And I think Bronia could have learnt a lot from him too, I expect she did. He;s just so passionate and amazing. He's well encouraging and is always says there's room for improvement no matter what... I agree.

He also said something I found quite controversial... he said that music is the one thing in the whole world that unites everyone in the whole world - it doesn't matter what language you speak, what religion you are or anything, music unites people. There's such depth and emotion in it.. it's just amazing.

So right now, I'm tired, I've drunk almost a whole bottle of rose, I've written nearly 2/3 of my research project, I'm totally buzzing and I'm listening to New World on youtube!! Whooop!