Time flies when you're having fun!

It's hard to believe that our 12 day stay in the French Alps is over already! What an incredible setting for learning and performing!! I met so many fantastic people at the course, and it was especially nice for Kana and I to go together since we see each other so rarely! We ended up being in different hotels at MusicAlp, so we still didn't see each other as much as you might think!

Lessons went very well over the past two weeks for both of us, and our chamber music lessons were good as well. Our teacher for chamber music was Simone Feyrabend, a viola professor at National Academy of Bouloghe-Billancourt and assistant to the Academy of Paris. She is also the violist of the Elyséen Quartet. She ended up coaching quite a few Brahms trios (with clarinet) over the course of the week, so I think she really enjoyed our flute duo. We started lessons with the Mendelssohn Scherzo arranged for two flutes, and also worked on the Kessick "Exotic Perfumes". Mme. Feyrabend particularly liked the Kessick, so we performed four of the movements on the chamber music recital.

The performance went well, and we had fun trying to play into the "exotic" sound of the piece. We're looking forward to doing the whole thing on our recitals in August!

We both learned so much this week, although not as much about "flute playing" as you might think. The joy of studying with Jean is that he is always searching for the inner musician. His goal is to help us find our music, and then let the rest follow. Truly, I think we both had moments of that this week. It's an amazing, and freeing feeling to play that way, with a level of communication that goes far beyond just reading the score. Of course, we have a lot of hard work to do to make sure that we keep it up, and it's an incredible challenge to always play this way! So, we'll squeeze in some more practice together before I head back to the States on Tuesday. We may or may not squeeze in some shopping, too..... ;)

Great memories with a fantastic friend!!