sick with the flu

Only a few months ago, I remember going to the supermarket to by ease-a-cold (that stuff is gold!).
Now, I am struck down with the flu yet again. But that should be no surprise. It IS winter now and the winter bug is being passed around. Something serious is being spread because I was teaching on Wednesday and almost all of my students came to their lesson sick, spluttering or sniffing. Quite the charming isn't it!

Today is the final day for semis of the 9th SIPCA. Even I'm nervous for the competitors. My predictions for the Final 6 are (and not in this order at all):

Ran Dank
Hoang Pham
Tomoki Kitamura
Tatiana Kolesova
Mariangela Vacatello
Eric Zuber

I think Eric Zuber has a good chance in making it because his Mendelssohn fairly impressive. His 2nd movement showed much more expression than what he has presented so far.

Charlie Albright is also great however I have issues with him in the fact that he spread out most of Chopin Op 25 throughout his program and also split up his Sonata!

Tatiana will most probably win Audience prize especially after her jazz rendition in Stage 3.

In about 12 hours, Yoonsoo Ree will finish off Stage IV with her chamber music component and we will all await for the results.

so i've succumbed...

It seems like the trend, has been for quite some time, but I gave blogging a rest. I do my random rants on facebook every now and then, and even myspace has been quiet but now blogspot. What can I say? The only reason I even bothered looking twice at it is because pianofortephilia is on here. hehe.
AND the 9th SIPCA has been on for the last week. I really would have liked to blog about it all but ushering got the better of me.

One thing I have to say is that the experience of ushering this year has been ridiculously homourous. The very fact that we were warned of the audience demographic being of the likes of 'purists' would be an understatement.

The tiniest creak of a chair, to the rustling of a soother lozenge would result in heads turning to eyebrows frowning. What can an usher do if an old man coughs so much that the only way to stop it is to shove a lozenge down his throat, but in doing so, the man opens his zipper bag noisily, unwraps the throat soother noisily then wait, he decides to noisily close his zipper bag. You think that is bad enough, don't even start on mobile phones!
MOBILE PHONES = heart attack. So I can accomodate for old people who don't know how to use the technology but you don't understand how much it bothers people. As a pianist, ok, sure, you can be annoyed but as an audience member...please! I had a man come up to me and say 'I heard that mobile you know?'. Well, guess what, I did too mister! He then asks 'you don't happen to know who it is would you?' and I politely answer 'I'm sorry I didn't catch them in time', to a shocking response by the man of: 'That person really should be imprisoned...I would like to knock their teeth out'.

Well well well, who ever knew that classical music lovers had such agro-violence in them! KNOCK THEIR TEETH OUT?

Anyways, that is the experience of the competition from an usher's point of view.
Enjoy!