Today, as usual, I made it a point to attend the free lunch hour concerts at the university’s music faculty. In fact, today’s concert was more important than most other weeks’.
Bonnie Brown was performing.
The first time I saw her perform was in August 05 and it was an enthralling high energy, high speed piano solo. It was the kind of solo that one might use to show off the fact that their fingers can dance at well over 10 Hz on the keyboard.
Anyway I prefer these cheerful pieces to those string quartets that seem to tell you, “I’m so depressed I want to die. Please shoot me, and then shoot yourself after you’re done.”
A brief search on the university’s pages reveals that
Bonnie began studying piano at the age of three. During her time at the Faculty of Music, Bonnie has been awarded the ‘Eric and Linda Jullyan’ Memorial Scholarship’ and the ‘Ormond Exhibition’ for the most outstanding practical examination results in 2001 and 2002. In 2003 Bonnie received the ‘Rosemary Kenny’ prize awarded by the Faculty for the ‘Best Third or Final Year’ student in the bachelor of Music course and most recently the ‘Doris F. Chandler’ Memorial Bursary.
In 2003, Bonnie performed as the featured soloist at the University of Melbourne 150th Anniversary Concert in the Melbourne Town Hall. Bonnie is currently undertaking a Master of Music at the University, specialising in Music Performance under the supervision of Professor Ronald Farren-Price.
Impressive. Very very impressive.
***So I got up this morning, and the clock on my Windows taskbar was 1 hour behind the other clocks. Daylight saving must have started, so I wound the clocks back by 60 minutes and had one more hour to slack around before leaving.
I arrived at 12.55, and the entrance of the hall was surprisingly deserted. Usually, it would be a buzz of activity as people drifted in and out of the performance venue.
When I went up to the front desk, the lady behind it told me that the concert had already started.
“What? Did it start at 1?”
“Yes.”
I looked at my watch dumbly, “Shit…must be the daylight saving time.” At this point I thought the university had not switched over, which was extremely puzzling. She laughed a sympathetic laugh.
“Thought I wanted to catch Bonnie Brown performing… shit, this sucks.”
“You can still watch the final parts,” she suggested, her hand gesturing towards the door.
“Yes I’ll do that. Thank you,” I headed for the door, extremely annoyed with the circumstances.
Bonnie was still in the midst of her performance. As with the last time, it was an energetic piece with parts that had about 5 to 10 Hz note playing. Having seen a fair bit of lunch hour concerts, I can guess that her pieces would have added up to about 25 minutes. And she was doing it by memory- no score sheets.
I saw about 10 to 15 minutes of the performance.
When I got home, I asked my housemate about the daylight saving time changeover.
“Not until after the Grand Prix,” he told me.
“My computer had already changed, causing me to miss about half of the concert. I’m quite pissed off.”
“Yeah my computer did it too.”
A search on the internet gave this page:
Microsoft products do not reflect Australian daylight saving time changes for the year 2006
Fuck you, Microsoft wankers. Fuck you.
Edited:Turns out it is not Microsoft's fault. Heh. (insert sheepish grin)
A few states in Australia postponed the daylight saving switchover due to the Commonwealth Games and the F1 GP.
So it boils down to my gross ignorance.
PersonalLabels: music, personal
