Piano Commencement Contest & Site News

Tonight, I played my piano piece for BJ’s annual commencement contest in front of a panel of 3 piano faculty members – Mr. Tom Grimble, Mrs. Faye Lopez, and Mrs. Judy Rea. My piece was “Prelude” from Suite Bergamasque by Claude Debussy. I got to play it on Mr. Grimble’s Steinway Baby Grand (a very nice piano at that). I can honestly say that tonight was probably my best ever run-through of that piece. I had no memory slips (whew!) and I don’t think I “botched” anything real major. However, I’m not sure how the difficulty of my piece ranks against everyone else’s. Oh well . . . they should post the results in the next day or two.

If you don’t know what the commencement contest is all about, here some info on that. Each year, the university holds a contest in each of the divisions of the school of Fine Arts. Every piano major/principal is expected (ie. required) to participate in the piano competition. We must pick a piece and prepare it without receiving any help or guidance from any of the piano faculty, especially our teacher. The run-offs for piano were tonight, and the semi-final round is scheduled for next Monday (the 12th). The winners of each of the commencement contests perform in front of the entire university family during commencement week.

Enough about piano . . . in other news . . . I’m working on an update for this site. There are some quirks about the design that annoy me (as a web designer), and I’m looking for a fresher, more readable layout. It’s almost done. That should come as time allows this semester. I’m also working on another client for xHTMLpro.com. And . . . this is my first post using WordPress 2.1 since I upgraded a week or so ago (Fantastico made that real easy). It’s great. I love the auto-save feature and the tabbed editor.

That’s all for now.