Bassooning in Welly

The last few days have been a little bit tedious compared to my first days here in Wellington. After our concert on Friday night (which was great fun and sounded pretty good, too!), I spent the weekend studying and practicing. I had an audition playing solos with the orchestra yesterday afternoon, so I wanted to make sure that I was properly prepared. 

Since my apartment is situated between the elevators and the laundry room on my floor, I've been pretty fearless practicing in the building. That said, I prefer to use a practice room when I can, so I've also been going to the orchestra offices for a session each day. In the hallway, which features office spaces divided by frosted glass with music notes on it, they have photos from notable performances in past seasons of the NZSO. It seems that in 1969 the orchestra performed some comedy pieces, including the one shown below. 

I read all the captions in case there was a great gag I could do with the Breaking Winds, but...I didn't find anything that would quite suit our group.

I am very lucky to be learning this repertoire with the NZSO--it's a special opportunity to play any music with a great orchestra, but the pieces that we're playing this month are some of the "greatest hits". The problem with that, though, is that while everyone knows the pieces well, I'm still too young and inexperienced to be familiar with the parts. So this is how I've been studying: I load the part on my Kindle, then I load videos of great orchestras playing the repertoire on Youtube and play along.  That way I can learn aurally when my entrances happen, and I can learn visually what a conductor's cues might look like. I can also practice matching style and intonation with various orchestras' wind sections--as long as they aren't German or Austrian! German orchestras play at a considerably sharper pitch level than American (and Kiwi) orchestras do, and the bassoon is a notoriously sharp instrument. The last thing in the world that I need is to get that sharp pitch orientation in my ear.

My dad asked me for more cuisine updates, and I intend to deliver. One kind of food that you can get on every block in central Wellington that I had never eaten before is Malaysian food. It has a delicious combination of East Asian and South Asian influences. So there are stir fries, noodles, and rice, but there are also lots of spices and curries. Last night I ordered a Malaysian dish on a whim for "takeaway" (to go). It ended up being an assortment of curries served over rice with garnishes of cucumber, spicy chili peanuts, and deep fried anchovies. I loved it. Way to go, Malaysia!