(Eh see the sign put outside M4-01! I typed that, hohoho! It used to be bright yellow, now it is a yucky pale beige colour -_-)Hello NYCO!
What a refreshing change this is! The blog now looks a lot more personalized and colourful! And oh I am finally posting since 9th of August last year! If you check the archives well, you should realize that out of the 84 posts I actually contributed 17! And this is my 18th. (Yes, I did count) I feel ancient-old! It seemed like a flash of time since we were having the last concert! Hopefully I can hype up the uninformed about the upcoming NYCO Concert 2008 - just through my interesting experiences two years ago...
Actually, practising for the concert is not really as fearful as you think it can get! Surely, everybody practices hard for their performance items and hopes not to make even a single mistake during the actual night. On the contrary I was more worried about having my drumsticks flying into the audience (fretfully a big-shot).
(See the arty-farty poster two years ago! Quite a different projection from what we have for the concert poster this year!)
I recall quite fondly the ensemble item YQP had: Gu Shi (Drum of the Poem, for the hanyupinyin-hopeless). Not for how powder-ful the item was (heh heh, we put powder on the drums to make us look more mystical when we hit on them and the powder flies), or how we managed to be coordinated for the entire piece, but for puny details like how Chan Xin Yi broke her bass drum mallet. If you had not seen a bass drum mallet before, ask me during Dazu the next time okay. I shall show you a sample and explain that it takes a lot of effort, guts and luck to break a brand-new mallet, especially by a then Secondary One junior. I think she still remains proud of this incident. For the record, my sleepy father commented that the mallet-breaking incident made him more awake.
I recall quite fondly the ensemble item YQP had: Gu Shi (Drum of the Poem, for the hanyupinyin-hopeless). Not for how powder-ful the item was (heh heh, we put powder on the drums to make us look more mystical when we hit on them and the powder flies), or how we managed to be coordinated for the entire piece, but for puny details like how Chan Xin Yi broke her bass drum mallet. If you had not seen a bass drum mallet before, ask me during Dazu the next time okay. I shall show you a sample and explain that it takes a lot of effort, guts and luck to break a brand-new mallet, especially by a then Secondary One junior. I think she still remains proud of this incident. For the record, my sleepy father commented that the mallet-breaking incident made him more awake.
We also had a piano concerto Huang He (Movements II and III) with Chan Yi as our soloist. She was a very able senior from the Suona section. It was quite a hellish time practising that piece - It rivalled the difficulty of Di Yi Er Hu Kuang Xiang Qu, if not even more. The real jerky was during the actual performance that night: It was the finale piece! What a impressive finish, you would think. However, it was not as smooth-sailing as we all wanted it to be: Chan Yi stopped and paused at a specific point though it was not deliberate. My dog, were we shocked! "Hey, hey! Omg what happened?!" Fortunately Chan Yi recovered in time and the orchestra resumed. We later found out that Chan Yi momentarily blanked out. What an experience, even Mrs Ee was bummed!
(Imagine Mrs Ee looking like that... But of course not! Mrs Ee remained calm and composed, as always!)
And for other miscellaneous affairs like... the performance costume. My section, being hard-core rebels at heart, gamely omitted the ribbon detail from our costumes. (You know, we have to tie this long string into a ribbon at the back of our costumes to make our waists seem more defined.) We also refused to put on make-up... We took lots of cam-whorish photos backstage when we had the time to. We gossiped about instructors high-time! We speculated that a certain teacher-in-charge would diss us for our lack of make-up! We disturbed our friends from other sections! The list goes on...
(I disturbed your president, Sheila Koo. About what? Her lack of height of course! She forces my head down to pretend to look tall. Gaah, we were such youthful Secondary Two juniors.)
And so you can see now, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy! Similarly, all practice and no fun makes NYCO a dull orchestra! We are not like that though! As long as we care to commit and give a best shot at it for the remaining 50 days... We will see the light at the end of the tunnel! We shall wow the audiences and make them roll down the stairs! We shall savour the flowers we received from our friends, make potpourri out of them and stuff them in our netballer friends' faces (or trackers, if you like). Most importantly, we shall be the one and only NYCO! No matter whether you are from massive army XYZ, arm-strong Ruanliu, lady-like Pipa, breath-controlling Suona, french-fries Sheng, Mrs Ee-tortured Dizi, instrument-bigger-than-me Cellobass, or pee-inducing YQP, you are part of NYCO! *Does a celebratory dance*
Your one and only handsome and cool and forever stylish,
Chewy-Fei :D