NYC Day 3

Our third day in NYC (well technically we are in Manhattan all week, but NYC sounds cooler :P), was pretty long and we actually spent time planning out some of it! We got up pretty early and had breakfast at the same place as yesterday (eggs and cheese on a bun) from the street vender who remembered us, which was pretty neat. We then headed out to the Guggenheim Museum, which was a little over a three mile walk (I understand why New Yorkers are all in such good shape, they walk everywhere! Another good reason to live in the city). The pictures below are from the museum, the first being the museum itself from the outside (pretty awesome looking right?!), the second is a part of a large canvas on which all guests could color on with crayons, so of corse I did! :P The third and fourth are inside the museum, pretty sweet! I would recommend this museum even if it is just to look at the architecture of it!

We then headed back to central park for something we had been craving since yesterday: Belgian Waffles. I think that the picture below speaks for itself. THEY WERE DELICIOUS!!!

We were pressed for time in a way since we had a musical to go to that afternoon: 'The Phantom of the Opera', which none of us had seen on stage (I've seen the movie, but the play was definitely better!). We walked through Times Square on our way which is where this first picture comes from. The play itself was amazing! I loved it, even if the people behind us were complaining about the singing (that there was too much singing.....it is a broadway MUSICAL about an OPERA....silly people!), and would be more than willing to see it again! We even got some souvenirs, including a t-shirt that I plan on wearing on Friday for the trip home.

We went out to dinner and ate at T.G.I.Friday's, which was another place where we hadn't been before. I am glad that I eat fish (even as a vegetarian) because otherwise I would not have found much (as would be expected). It was good food, but they were understaffed and really busy so the service was slow, but worth it. Afterwords, we headed back to Times Square and wandered around in the dark for a while, finding our way into the M&M store, Toys R Us, and the Hersey's store. It was a good night! I even ran into Luigi, and got a picture after having to tip him (weird...).

I've noticed a lot of Jazz being sold around here, as well as French and Italian music around, and am thinking of increasing my collection of these musics due to how popular they are and how much I like them! Also, going to the musical tonight has rekindled my interest in my music and I am looking forward to continuing playing in summer pit orchestras, maybe someday getting to play with a traveling broadway show O.O that'd be super crazy! :P
Well, another day come and gone, have a great night, dear readers! Gwnite!
Love,
Sara :)

Musica Monday

Alright, so for those of you who don't know, I am in the St Olaf Handbell Choir. Yes, I play handbells. And yes, it is awesome! We went on tour a few weekends ago, which was the weekend when I posted absolutely nothing (sadly which has been happening quite a bit lately :(, working on that sorry!), but I did want to share with you our home concert and a few of the pieces we played. A full concert can be found here. Otherwise I will post a few of the videos that made their way onto YouTube :). We have to go through the proper copyrights in order to put the different pieces we play up on YouTube, so there aren't a lot of them, but some of them were pretty easy to get rights for, so those few are up online. We also have another home concert that I will do my best to post up when it happens closer to the end of the semester. Our conductor explains our pieces during the full concert so I won't get into that, but here are some of the YouTube approved songs (actually some of my favorite as well :P).

Above is Scottish Festival Dance, which was a lot of fun to play and learn :P If you listen you can hear the 'fiddling' parts :D
Below is 'Idyll', another good piece, it was more complicated to learn and play, but once we got the hang of it, it sounded really neat! :D

Alright guys, I hope you enjoy my music choice today :D You really should watch the entire concert, it will show you that anyone can have a mishap during a show, and that they show truly must just go on (even if you are now minus a C3).
Love,
Sara :)

Fall Concert: Trampled by Turtles

Each school year, Olaf has two major concerts: a fall concert and a spring concert. For each concert they bring in professional bands/groups to perform at a ticket cost of $5 per person. This year's fall concert was this past Friday night (yea I'm a little slow on the posting sorry...), the artist? Trampled by Turtles. For those of you who don't know, Trampled by Turtles is a bluegrass group consisting of a banjo, 2 guitars (one a bass), a fiddle, and a mandolin. As a fiddle/violin player myself some of the songs they played I recognized the style and the tune of, and was able to pick out many notes and the techniques they were using. It was pretty neat. I took a few pictures and have posted them here, They aren't the best quality but they were taken with my iphone, so cut me a little slack :P. Bluegrass isn't normally one of my choice styles of music to listen to, but the concert was still quite good! I was a fan of the openers! You can see that post here, or by looking at yesterday's Musica Monday post...

This last one is probably one of my favorites, along with the picture with the blue lights, because they capture what I saw to be the essence of the band! I really enjoyed the concert and look forward to finding out who is coming for the spring concert (we won't know until February or March)!

What concerts have you guys been to recently? What did you think of them?

Love,

Sara :)