INTRODUCTION (or, what a recital is, why i'm stressed, and why i decided to do whatever the hell HUH WHAT? is).
As a WAAPA bachelor student, the thing that was on the forefront of my and my peer’s minds since the first year was the recital. You have two recitals, a junior and a graduation recital, in the third and fourth year respectively. Because composition allows such a variety of genres and sounds, the recital can be pretty much anything, which is both exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time.
The implication of a recital for a student, especially composition, is to put as much of yourself out there, and do it well. The music that you write is going to be written, directed, and probably performed in part by you. You started it, and you’ve finished it, you’ve poured blood, sweat, and tears into it, so people are going to expect a lot of “you” in the recital, and the last you want to be is “bad”, right? I’m currently in a large amount of debt, I’ve been going to the art school in Western Australia, full-time, for three years, so I should have something to show for that, and that something should be good. It needs to. The question is: do I?
That was a long-winded way of saying that this has taken a toll on me, something that I did not anticipate in first year. I had magical, intricate, insane ideas of dream-like musical with puppets and choreography and acrobatics and stage design and a non-linear narrative; just something utterly unrealistic. After two years of fantasising, I had to shift hard to a more realistic goal, and came up with a plan: the junior recital is more band focused, while the graduation recital is more rooted in academia and whatever I’m doing for my honours. With that in mind, I created this abomination of music, and now present: HUH WHAT?
The implication of a recital for a student, especially composition, is to put as much of yourself out there, and do it well. The music that you write is going to be written, directed, and probably performed in part by you. You started it, and you’ve finished it, you’ve poured blood, sweat, and tears into it, so people are going to expect a lot of “you” in the recital, and the last you want to be is “bad”, right? I’m currently in a large amount of debt, I’ve been going to the art school in Western Australia, full-time, for three years, so I should have something to show for that, and that something should be good. It needs to. The question is: do I?
That was a long-winded way of saying that this has taken a toll on me, something that I did not anticipate in first year. I had magical, intricate, insane ideas of dream-like musical with puppets and choreography and acrobatics and stage design and a non-linear narrative; just something utterly unrealistic. After two years of fantasising, I had to shift hard to a more realistic goal, and came up with a plan: the junior recital is more band focused, while the graduation recital is more rooted in academia and whatever I’m doing for my honours. With that in mind, I created this abomination of music, and now present: HUH WHAT?
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