I discuss Festival Orchestra's first concert.

A quick blog post from the Aspen Music Festival and School: after a round of auditions when we all first arrived at school, I was placed in the back of the first violins of the Aspen Festival Orchestra. This was sort of shocking to me, as the audition felt pretty bad, and the competition to be in that orchestra is pretty tough. I was also so, so excited: this orchestra gives pretty high-profile concerts, with famous soloists, and plays great repertoire. I'm fairly sure that this will be the best orchestra I have ever played with.

This concert, we're playing Symphony no. 7 by Shostakovich, plus a world premiere of a cello concerto, "Vision," by Kevin Puts. Yo-Yo Ma is the soloist. (!!!!) Luckily, I hardly play during this piece, so I hope to just sit back and watch this amazing artist from up close. (Well, sort of close.) The piece is beautiful, largely tonal, with lots of lovely chord progressions and textures on which the cello sound can just float. I think it will be beautiful. Yo-Yo, as David Zinman calls him, will rehearse with us today. This will probably guarantee us something of an audience during rehearsal. The concert, we hear, is selling out and should be a huge event.

I'm here in Aspen in order to gauge just how much I need and want to be a classical musician. How do the rehearsals make me feel? How much can I really practice? How do other musicians make me feel; is this the life I want? So, yesterday's rehearsal was my first real experience as a musician of the festival. It was frankly pretty grueling; the Shostakovich is an enormous, difficult piece, so I wasn't exactly ecstatic for every single moment. But I truly loved looking across the orchestra - which is enormous - and watching my fellow musicians. The concert master, Herbie Greenberg, is a fantastic man who keeps turning around and addressing the violins: "Gang, it's a little messy ... Gang, we're going to be in TWO halves, right? ... Bravo, gang." David Zinman, our conductor, has a good sense of humor, and is expressive and easy to follow. There's a bit of Zinman-worship at the festival; it's probably deserved, so I'm really looking forward to finding out what he's like to work with. We will play several concerts under him.

I was just kicked out of the practice room by one of the 200 or so pianists studying at Aspen. I'm off to find another place to work.