Day 1

Monday - May 8th @ 3:00 pm

Hours spent today: 5

Hours spent total: 5

Today, I woke up around 10 am and sauntered into my barn to start practicing on my crumbling baby grand with a clicking pedal and non existent dynamics. After about fifteen minutes of fooling around and playing whatever came to my mind, I started to dial in and practice the A section of Fantasie Impromptu. I spent a little less than an hour working on my own before driving into Concord to meet with Cheryl, my mentor and lifelong teacher. When I arrived at her house, we chatted for ten minutes while I played with her new puppy, Bailey, and then sat down at the piano to play for another two hours. We started with Clair De Lune, a piece I first played in middle school but have been working on bringing back, and then moved on to Liebestraum, my favorite piece of all time. I enjoyed spending about an hour on these two pieces, as Cheryl and I pointed out moments to bring out dynamics, as well as places to speed up and places to slow down to give the piece a more musical feel. We then spent the last hour working through the entirety of Fantasie Impromptu, with her giving me suggestions on how to practice the complicated polyrhythm, and tactics to understand the theory behind the most complex measures. After leaving Cheryl’s, I headed up to Proctor, listening to my favorite piano classical music playlist. I spent about another half hour studying my music while listening to different performances before heading to the locker room for lacrosse. So excited for tomorrow!

I couldn't get an actual picture of Bailey, so here is a dog that looks very similar





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