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https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1i8bdrqXtD3DfF8i25nuNY?si=uVa-9hocREWFWVbFnLpJnw
Photo credit: Fistful of Tigers
Hi everyone,
Those who are close to me know that I am in a —very— transitional period of my life. After graduating from Cornish in May, I decided to move back to Dallas and work towards my gap year goals. When I graduated, I had just finished the most difficult year of my life, which isn’t dramatic or surprising for you to hear if you personally knew me during that time.
This is not to say that good things didn’t happen! Here’s a recap:
I learned and truly S-H-E-D the hardest violin repertoire that I have yet to tackle. (For my senior recital)
I composed multiple electro-acoustic works using MAX/MSP as my primary compositional tool. I still have so much to learn, but I finally feel confident in calling myself a user of this programming software.
I furthered my interest in musicology, and presented my paper “Pauline Oliveros, Julius Eastman, and the Limits of Musical Activism” at AMS-PNW, a month before my senior recital. (This is when my sanity officially said farewell, I think)
All in all, my gap year is off to a pretty good start. I have a not so little violin studio of 25 students! Also, I was recently awarded the Eileen Southern Travel grant, which will allow me to attend AMS Boston in October. While spending a lot of time writing my statements of purpose and drafting sample papers, I realized that it could be really beneficial for me to supplement application writing with something more unrefined and personal. Hence the blog! Woo! Finally got to saying WHY I started this. Topics to look forward to in upcoming blogs: casual/mini essays on emotion as a compositional tool, analysis of pop music…
But seriously, thank you to all of my colleagues, friends, and mentors for sticking around during this transitional period of my music and academic career. I’m really excited for whats to come! But, I am also enjoying the present, and remaining grateful for this time to reflect + heal.
Lots of love,
Lily