Ay-aye-aye

Well, the first day of classes is done for me. I had my piano lesson at 9:30. My teacher is wonderful and, oy vay, she assigned a lot of pieces:
Tango by Albanez
Papillion by Grieg
Haydn Sonata in C Maj (all 3 movements)
Mendelssohn Song without Words in E-flat Maj
Bach 2-part invention in D min
We only had a half-hour but she worked with me on posture, wrist movement, pedaling, eye focus (yes), relaxed shoulders, individual note emphasis within a chord and octave scales. (The rumor is that she was an Olympic competitor in rhythmic dance.)
Next class was a biggie – solfege/music theory. 10:30-12:50 (I have it for 5 hours every week) The teacher is very nice, very demanding and wins the award for the most homework I’ve ever been assigned for one class. For Thursday’s class I have a huge laundry list of things I have to learn, practice and review. We sang solfege (do, re, mi…) some Bach examples, a madrigal, a 3-part Mozart and an Italian art song. We did two dictation pieces and we did a bunch of diatonic theory (triads, scale degrees…). One fun thing we did that I’ve never done was solfege-repeating a cannon. My teacher, Klara, played a melody on the piano. We had to repeat back the first two measures on solfege while she continued on to the next two measures and on and on through the cannon. It was really a lot of fun. My brain was working on two almost completely different tasks simultaneously – singing/solfeging and listening/memorizing. My homework includes several pieces that I have to solfege one part and play on the piano the other two parts – ee, gads.
Next, I accompanied a singer’s lesson. She was doing Faure’s Pie Jesu so that was nothing new; I could zone out a bit.
Then it was one of my scheduled practice times so I went and played through my new piano pieces and worked on my solfege.
I’m back in my room listening to the Gypsy Kings and chilling out. If I work up the energy again I’ll make dinner and do some more homework and practicing. More tomorrow!