iPad-users, advice needed! I’ve finally decided to stop being the last musician alive using exclusively paper scores, so I asked for a corporate iPad. Now I’m learning to use it (like your granny, but worse) and exploring which programs I need as an opera répétiteur. There’s a forScore account, which seems perfect for daily work&edits but I miss two extra functions: a system of commenting (must be powerful) and a system of library organising (must be detailed). Any ideas of additional apps that could do the trick? #feelingold#andsilly
On the importance of words. My whole life changed because of one small talk with this cutie @cellohuber. If we hadn’t started chitchatting 13 years ago in Manchester while waiting for his teacher, I’d never have dared to send in a late application to @musicchapel. Which means that not only would I have missed three incredible years at that institution, I also wouldn’t have worked with the legendary Dmitry Bashkirov who was a guest professor there at the time, and he wouldn’t have transferred me to @kgerstein, who has meant the world to me ever since. I also wouldn’t have played soooo much chamber music late evenings there with colleagues from all departments, therefore wouldn’t have accidentally ended up accompanying José van Dam lesson where he told me (t-o-l-d) that it seems to him like I was built to be an opera répétiteur (while back then I didn’t even know the difference between, for instance, Orfeo ed Euridice and Orphée aux enfers). Even one phrase can change a lifetime. Please talk to each other. #love
Often, one of the opera repetiteur’s duties is looking after opera studio students in between productions, and I honestly love doing it. Look at these young artists. They ask questions that would never come to my mind, let alone the answers. They see and rebel against every bit of bullshit in this world, and refuse to accept that this is the reality. Their generation doesn’t have the problems we had, but they have and deal with many others we have no idea about. They make mistakes, and they have the courage to admit them and to learn from them. They are incredibly talented and somehow so often completely unaware of it. Wherever they end up professionally, they are my inspiration, my hope, and my pride. #grateful
