A busy week across the pond

Settlement piano students Cary Zhang and Serim An and faculty member Sandra Carlock have journeyed to the Finchcocks Musical Museum in England. Their time overseas is coming to an end -- they'll head back to the US tomorrow -- but they've kept up an impressive pace during their stay. Here, we catch up on all their activities over the past week: everything from intensive rehearsals and performances to a trip to London.

4/5/12

On Monday, at our session with Stephen Devine, Director of Education at Finchcocks, we learned a great deal about how the mechanisms of the instruments relate to the way in which the music should be interpreted, and how the tone is produced. We have more to say on this subject, but it was truly a light bulb day!!

Cary, Serim and Sandra working with the Erard (1866)

On Tuesday, we had an all-day practice session (as in, eight hours!). The job at hand was to apply
what we had learned on Monday and to become ever more comfortable with the instruments we will
use in our presentations on Saturday. We were very pleased with the progress we made!

Wednesday was a quick trip to London. We took the round London bus tour and saw all of the famous landmarks such as: Big Ben, the Parliament Buildings, Westminster Abbey, The Tower of London and the Tower Bridge, and the London Eye. We had lunch in a traditional English pub across from the Tower of London. Serim had steak and kidney pie, and Ms. Carlock and Cary had British beef and ale pie- traditional British fare. The night before, we had been taken to dinner at a pub down the road from Finchcocks by Mr. and Mrs. Burnett where we all had fish and chips.

Today, we all three played a benefit coffee concert at the United Reform Church in Folkestone, England. We played on a modern grand which felt very strange at first, after five days on early pianos! The concert went really well, though. The audience was tremendously responsive- Ms. Carlock has performed in Folkestone numerous times, so she is known to audiences there. Our concert this morning was arranged by Michael Foad, Music Director and Organist at the church.

We will add more tomorrow, which will be another all- day practice session in preparation for our lecture recitals on Saturday morning. We are feeling better and better prepared and are VERY excited!!"