Piano and Poetry

Everything is back to normal! Okay, that's a huge overstatement.

My aunt Jennifer introduced me to her friend, Professor Wilson, on Wednesday. He seemed really shy and awkward at first, but when we got to the piano (a beautiful Steinway grand, I was freaking out!) he warmed up a lot. He's a very quiet, unassuming middle-aged man, he speaks softly and plays piano loudly. As my friend Anne would say, he's a kindred spirit.

It was an incredible first lesson and I can't wait for my next one. These are the pieces we chose for my exam:

1. English Suite no. 2 in A minor, Allemande and Gigue by J.S. Bach
2. Sonata in D Major, 3rd and 4th movements, by Ludwig Van Beethoven.
3. Ballade in D minor, op. 10, no. 1 by Johannes Brahms.
4. La plus que lente by Claude Debussy.
5. Sonatina in C Major, op. 13, no. 1, 2nd and 3rd movements by Dmitri Kabalevsky.

RCM stands for Royal Conservatory of Music, and their requirements for the grade 10 exam are complicated. You have to perform five pieces (one from each category), various studies (scales, chords, arpeggios, etc), and pass ear and sight reading tests. I'm not panicking.

I'm not panicking! Professor Wilson is one of the best teachers around (so Aunt Jennifer says, and I believe her). He's been teaching at the University of Regina for years now and his music class accepts only five students each year. Five. It's insane. I'm probably never going to study in his class, so I'm really taking advantage of the private lessons right now.

Now............. on the subject of how I almost lost the privilege of going to these amazing lessons, let's backtrack.

Sunday, June 29th. Poetry slam in downtown Regina with my best friend Anne.

We went to dinner with my parents (which wasn't too awkward, thankfully) and then we met my cousins downtown.

The bookstore we went to is called Athabasca Secondhand Books, it's very small but cozy. Old creaky hardwood flooring, comfortable armchairs and couches everywhere, old postcards and messages on the walls- basically paradise, or something like it.

There were probably about 30 or 40 people, there, it was packed. Like, people sharing seats packed. Anne and I got there early so we were able to get seats fairly close to the front.

I felt a bit shy around all of the university students, I'm pretty sure everyone attending was older than us. And, you know, probably more mature. Anne was bouncing off the walls (okay, I'm exaggerating) with excitement and we got a few odd stares when she started gushing about the tea selections.

The poems were really, really amazing. Some of them I recognized (from school and stuff, popular things like "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost or "Life is Fine" by Langston Hughes. The poetry slam was divided into three parts, first they had readings of existing works, second was original performances (those ones were sooo intense), and last was adaptations of existing works. I think my favourite part was the last section of performances, because the artists who performed took old classic poems and reinvented them for modern audiences.

Here were some of the selections from the evening! They didn't have programs but I wrote down my favourites so I could look them up later.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud - William Wordsworth
To My Wife (With a Copy of My Poems) - Oscar Wilde
Still I Rise - Maya Angelou
The Broken Heart - William Barnes (This was one of the updated ones, it was really cool!)
Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face - Jack Prelutsky (Anne could NOT stop laughing at this one. It was pretty funny).
Friends, Romans, Countrymen... - William Shakespeare (you know the one!)
Daddy - Sylvia Plath. (Another one of the poems that the performer decided to update, she read it with some of her own work and it was awesome!)
Bingen on the Rhine - Caroline E. Norton (another updated one!)
Having a Coke with You - Frank O'Hara.
Where the Sidewalk Ends - Shel Silverstein
A Carcass - Baudelaire
The Donkey - G.K. Chesterton (another updated poem! This one was so cute.)

I wish I could remember the names of the original works, but obviously I won't be able to find those online!

Until next time.