This past school year has, without doubt, been the most insane for me yet on every level. The highlight by a longshot, of course, was my role as Alexander in the opera Fanny and Alexander at La Monnaie Royal Opera House. The experience opened so many doors for me carrier-wise that I barely know what to do with them. Working with such high caliber people as Ivo Van Hove, Thomas Hampson, and Anne Sofie Von Otter was such an honour, and given the magnitude of Fanny and Alexander as a project, it’s honestly hard to envision myself going up from there. That being said, I did branch out a little farther than opera this year, and plan on doing so more next year.
I’m proud of my first ventures into composition this year. Though i don’t necessarily like everything i’ve attempted to compose, i’ve gone from never wanting to touch the meer idea of writing music to willingly starting to create a piece with my classmate Blanka Koller (it’s still a work in progress but i’m enjoying the process of writing it so far). I still need to get over some hurdles in terms of digital music production if I really want to improve and grow accustomed to composing, but I’m already happy with the little progress I’ve made since the start of the year.
Another thing I’ve only been progressing on since the start of the school year is the electric bass. I’d been wanting to start it for about a year before as a branch out into less classical music (i played cello for many years before stopping at the end of s5), but had never had the time or motivation to truly get started. With the introduction of Music 4 as a course, the need to play together as a group, and the lack of dedicated bassist in the rest of the class, I seized the opportunity to kickstart learning it, and bought myself a bass and amp to start practicing at home too. I haven’t had a whole lot of time outside of class to really push my skills, but I definitely intend to dedicate more time to practicing bass next year and over the summer.
As for concrete plans for next semester, I’ve got three large scale projects lined up for the first few months of the school year. Those being: the part of Charlie in the musical of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Brussels Light Opera Company (BLOC), the part of the third Knabe in an academy production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflüte, and being a member of the chorus in a new opera commissioned by my choir, SNAKE by Howard and Anna Moody at La Monnaie. Rehearsals for all three of these have already started in the past few weeks, and everything is going well so far. I’m particularly excited to take part in another musical, as I haven’t done that since I had the role of one of the Von Trapp children in The Sound of Music in the 23-24 season.
Other than my own performances, I plan on attending more smaller concerts, especially jazz concerts and others of bands I don’t know. I’m also hoping to become more comfortable with composing, and hopefully learning some guitar and piano (at least the basics) to be able to more easily experiment with composition at home, and because piano is a required skill in conservatoire, which I plan to go to right after S7. I also hope to improve my regularity in updating this portfolio, as my lack of it has resulted in not having the time to put everything I could on here – for example shorter diary entries for more miscellaneous things. I am still quite proud though of what I’ve done this year, and hope I can keep that throughout next year as well.
Leave a Reply