End of Semester!

Yesterday was the last day of classes – I handed in my two 3000 word essays (the only required projects up to this point), and that was that. Woah. Im not really sure when the semester happened. Compared to the American system, there is a lot less contact / in class time in the UK. My three classes - Music History, Wagner Seminar, and Composition - met twice a week, once a week, and every other week respectively. There was also a lot less work, so the semester just seemed to breeze by. The UK system leaves the amount of work you complete up to your own discretion - the teachers hand out generalized reading lists, and leave it at that. This approach has its advantages, but I think the American system pushes you harder. The standout classes were Wagner Seminar and Composition, both smallish third year courses, while History was a large second year lecture. The teacher for Wagner seminar was this badass young Irish woman with an endearing habit of pronouncing “myth” as “mit,” and whokept the class pretty lively. Wagner was a total asshole (read “Judaism in Music” – actually don’t read it), and I think his music is pretty awfully, but he is just crazy enough to be interesting to study. The very long DVD screenings we had of Wagner’s operas (the longest takes 3 days to perform) – were bearable only because of snacks and wine. Wagner seminar was also the most “American in style,” and most of the students here seemed to regard it as the most difficult. Composition was good because my tutor – who I unfortunately got to see only every other week, told me to “stop writing like an American!” and pushed me in some new directions. I have been trying to listen to a lot of European and UK music while I have been over here. I have to turn in a portfolio of compositions (Bach Soc. piece and a wind quintet) at the end of April. So that’s it for academics – I have two exams in May, and an additional presentation for Wagner Seminar at the end of April. To celebrate the end of classes, I made some chicken tikka and Indian rice (came out most excellently – thanks Laxmi) on Thursday. Afterwards Mads, Anna, Katy, and I played Kings and watched “Little Britain” – a popular comedy show that pokes fun at various contemporary British stereotypes. Most of the show seems to involve the two main actors getting decked out with fat suits and fake bad teeth (or maybe they are real?) and acting as unpleasant as possible. It is oddly fascinating. Yesterday Annabel and Katy hosted a big party at their flat, and most all of the usual suspects were in attendance. Good times. Last week I went with Chamber Choir to St. Andrews – a small university town across the Firth of Forth in the Kingdom of Fife. What great names. St. Andrews (the Uni where Prince William attended) is a very strange place indeed – all the students were red capes (Transylvanian count style), and the way the cape is worn indicates whether its wearer is a first, second, third, or fourth year student. Some people were walking around with the cape appearing to be falling off – but apparently that just means they are seniors. With its capes, isolated location and gothic campus, the whole thing felt quite Harry Potter. The town - a collection of small, quaint buildings, nestled up against the ocean – is quite tiny, but very clean and attractive. The landscape is dominated by a giant ruined cathedral (the former seat of the Kirk of Scotland) and an old castle, both of which sit atop rocky cliffs overlooking the sea. The day we went was cold and moody (as Scotland often seems to be), with the sun occasionally breaking out through dark clouds to illuminate the bright blue sea, rocky headlands, and distant snowy mountains. I had fish and chips lunch with the choir at a pub, and we spent the day walking about the town. At 5PM we performed a concert of music from the previous semester (I was mostly sight reading) to a very small audience in a beautiful old chapel run by the Uni. Later that evening, we had a very good time at the home of some friends of the choir director (the ever ridiculous but excellent Eric von Ibler), who were kind enough to provide us with various fried treats and white wine. Speaking of fried things – last week I had a complete English breakfast (tomato-y baked beans required) at a restaurant with Jack and Andrew. The main purpose of this breakfast - I had had a very delicious English Breakfast for Courntey’s birthday in early March - was to try “blood pudding,” which we had not partaken of at Courtney’s birthday. The pudding looks harmless enough – like black hash brown, and tastes like some familiar fried food that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. However, the thought of its contents were too much for me and I couldn’t really eat it. So much for being an adventurous eater – yesterday I downed an entire box of delicious Jaffa Cakes (spongy cake with orange jelly covered in chocolate), which was much more to my liking. Anyways I guess that’s all for now – next week my dad is coming in for a few days (up from a physics conference in London), and then Im off to Spain to visit Don Lopez.

PS - sorry about lack of pictures - my computer has problems. I have posted all pictures on facebook.

Ghosts and essays

The past week or so I have been somewhat busy writing two 3000 word essays for classes: one about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the other about two of Richard Wagner’s operas. Both are due next Friday. Between listening to Beethoven and reading Wagner’s completely ridiculous writings (Wagner really needs to stop), a few exciting things have happened. The most notable was probably the Chamber Choir concert on Saturday. It has really been a pleasure singing with the Chamber Choir – the standard is extremely high and the music we do is quite difficult. The concert went quite well – we didn’t get out of tune in places that had been problematic in rehearsals, and we got an excellent review in one of the local newspapers. Im sad that I will be missing the group’s tour to Malta in July, but we will be going to Saint Andrew’s (college town north of Edinburgh) this weekend to do another concert. After the Chamber Choir concert we celebrated Anna and Courtney’s birthdays with a very classy “posh party,” which required little preparation on my part because I was already wearing my classy new old suit. Two days ago I went on the “Edinburgh Ghost Tour” with Cindy and Rachel. Apparently, Edinburgh is one of the most “haunted cities in Europe” – its old stone architecture and rambling alleyways are certainly suggestive of ghostly goings on. Knowing my tolerance for horror movies, I was a little concerned about this expedition. This particular ghost tour went down into the abandoned vaults beneath the concealed bridge over the Cowgate. Apparently very poor people used to live in these lightless chambers back in days yore before they were finally sealed off sometime in the nineteenth century. I actually wish the tour had given us a little bit more of the city / area’s history – the guide mostly told us stories of the various supernatural encounters experienced by customers on the tour, the worst of which involve a ghost named “Mr. Boots” who smells like whisky and leather and pushes people in the dark when they least expect it. So yeah the ghost tour wasn’t too scary. Yesterday I hung out with Aditi Chakravarty, a Barnardite senior whom I know through voice lessons and Bach Society. Aditi was visiting friends from her junior year study abroad program in Australia who are now in Edinburgh. We had lunch at a Thai place (the Scots are very good with Indian and Thai food, but for some reason they make Chinese food very bland), and then walked to the Royal Scottish Gallery, where we hung out for a little while. IN the evening, I made curry with Rachel and Marie Clare, and enjoyed some delicious Orange Hobnobs, which I am going to miss very much upon my return (Americans just don’t have an equivalent to British biscuits). So that’s been the main excitement – I had a mild moment of culture shock the other day when I was talking to Andy from Chamber Choir and learned that the place that he works at – Ladbrokes (they are all over the place) – is not the electronics store I had though it was (lots of TVs inside), but rather a betting agency! Andy’s first college job was working as a bookie! Pretty badass.

Apologies for not having made a post in a while – my internet went down, and so Ive had to trek out to the library to do all my computing for the past few days. Things have indeed been rather eventful – The Musicians Ball, Miguel’s visit, and Anna’s birthday. I’ll take things in order – two Fridays ago was the Musicians Ball, where most all of the music students at Edinburgh Uni gather in black tie attire for food, alcohol, and ceiled dancing / club cheese (seemingly the most popular type of music in Edinburgh). Needless the say, the black tie presented a challenge, especially considering how Ive been borrowing formal wear for the past 2.5 years like a major piece of trash. So I decided to bite the bit and invest in a suit. I went bargain hunting and found an awesome 40 pound black dinner jacket and trousers at a vintage used clothes store called Armstrongs, but the vintage shirts there were rather worse for wear. I ended up spending more on a fancy shirt and a bow tie / cumberbund set from a place called Jenners then I did on the suit, but whatever – it will all last me for the next couple years at least. If only the exchange wasn’t so bad…but such is life. The affair itself was quite pleasant – I chatted with the usual musical suspects, and enjoyed some ceiled-ing. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand any of the in-joke “awards” they gave out to graduating fourth-years (no-one understands the whole freshman – sophomore- junior thing), but it fun anyways, and the night closed around 3AM with some delicious (in that gross way) kebabs from one of the Edinburgh versions of Koronets or Pinnacle.

Last Wednesday I went down to Edinburgh Turnhouse Airport (love the name) to pick up non other than Don Lopez, whom I nearly walked straight into while I looked distractedly sideways at the Scot Airways ticket counter. We went to a pub and had some haggis, and the next day set out early for the Isle of Arran, located south of Glasgow in the Firth of Clyde. The trip, which involved 2 trains and a ferry, took only about three hours total, but upon arrival we felt a world away. The Caledonian MacBrayne ferry dropped us off in a small little village called Brodick, which I gather is the sort of “capital” of the island. It was really quite sleepy, and there weren’t many people about. Coming during the off-season meant, I gather, that the pace of life was even slower than it would be during the spring and summer months. We had Coronation Chicken sandwiches (which made a big impression on Miguel), and then walked around the town a bit. Next we walked along the beach to the Arran Brewery, where the proprietress gave us a sample of some of their products. Having arrived without a car, and thus relying on the very infrequent bus service around the island, we ran back from the brewery just in time to catch a bus to our hotel in Catacol. The bus rides we took over the next two days gave us an excellent over view of Arran – mostly empty, with high, ragged mountains in the north part and rolling hills in the south. Our hotel was a small homey place located next to the water in a little town that seemed to consist of about three buildings. The owners had lots of friendly petable dogs lying about, and it seemed to be a hang out for some of the local Scots, who got rather boisterous and loud later in the evening while we sat upstairs watching Scottish television (they have a penchant for really scary public service announcements) and Alien II (scary!). The next morning Miguel and I set out to see the sights of Arran, starting with Lochranza Castle, which was about a 15 minute walk from the hotel. The whole place seemed stereotypically Scottish – the castle was a half ruined tower standing next to a small bay around which lay the sleepy village of Lochranza. The sheep aimlessly wandering about helped perfect the ambience. Next we hopped on the bus again (which, it being early morning, was doubling as the local schoolbus) and went down to Machrie Moor, where the friendly bus driver dropped us off at a sheep gate and told us to walk across a big empty field to reach the celebrated standing stones of Machrie Moor. After about 20 muddy minutes, we came to them – giant weathered liths dating from 2500 BC that stand silently in a rolling, open moor in the middle of the island. It was a pretty evocative place, complete with rolling clouds, brooding mountains, and empty moorland. We hung out on the moor for a while, and then took an epic hour long walk down the road from the moor to the seaside village of Blackwaterfoot, where we caught a bus back to Brodick and the ferry. We were quite lucky – it only started raining as we boarded the ferry back to the mainland. Miguel didn’t get to spend too much time in Edinburgh itself, but the visit was most excellent. I am excited about going to Spain at the end of the month!

Yesterday was Anna’s birthday, which we celebrated by eating Scottish Chinese food – which is rather like American, but somehow a little less flavorful I think – and then watching an amazingly bad movie called “Gladiatress” while eating tasty cake and drinking wine. Things are starting to get a little busy here as I have 2 3000 word essays due (one on Wagner and one on Beethoven) on March 23. Also – I will be returning to the US on April 19 to hear the Columbia Bach Society perform my piece ‘Tremors: A Report” at their Spring Concert at St. Paul’s Chapel on the 21rst. I hope people can come to this! I am really excited about it and looking forward to seeing CU folks!