What Causes That?

I better explain myself and what I'm doing (not that I'm entirely clear myself).

I live in New Zealand, and have done so for more than half of my life. I have also spent some time in South East Asia. I study not music, but law and accounting, and I'm just finishing off my final papers right now (yippee!).

That's actually not entirely true, I am studying for a DipABRSM in piano performance, but have never done music at university. My exam is in about a month's time, and it's quite scary to think that 11 months of hard work will culminate in an hour-long 'exam'. I finished Grade 8 years ago, and had always wanted to do a diploma, if for no other reason than to prove to myself that I could actually play well if I tried harder (I'm a last minute crammer when it comes to study, and that doesn't tend to work too well with piano exams and concerts). It also means that I am more able to find work as a piano teacher if I get sick of my desk job. And also, it adds to my superiority complex (and believe me, it's big). The thing is, lots of people get to Grade 8 in piano or whatever, and then they stop and never go near a piano again, which is a great pity. And I don't want to be like that. My performance for that is in about a month's time, and I'm playing in a couple of competitions in the time leading up to that. So it's all go from here...

And I love Gershwin!!! He is a genius... Aside from Gershwin, I also love musicals, JS Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Darius Milhaud, and Glenn Gould (another great "GG"). But that's stuff to talk about another day.

How did I get hooked into Gershwin? It's a long story... I was watching The Les Mis 10th anniversary concert, and I was listening to Ruthie Henshall as Fantine sing "I Dreamed A Dream", and I thought she had a very nice voice so I went on a big search for music by her. She had recorded a Gershwin CD called "Love Is Here To Stay"(which is sadly out of print, I would dearly love to get it), and a couple of others (which I have). BUT I found she was in the cast recording of the London production for "Crazy For You", a musical loosely based on Gershwin's "Girl Crazy" with a whole lot of other Gershwin music tossed in (like the Concerto in F, third movement, and The Man I Love as a bridge between scene changes). And that was the beginning of the craze...

Fast forward a year or so, when it came to choosing the programme for my diploma, I saw that Gershwin's piano transcriptions of "The Man I Love" and "I Got Rhythm" were on the list, and I had to play it... To be honest, I had only heard "The Man I Love" only a couple of times and thought it was orright, and I figured it was worth it to be able to play "I Got Rhythm", but now I really like "The Man I Love", even more than "I Got Rhythm". But they are both up there in my Gershwin top 10.

Aside from that, I'm also playing JS Bach's Prelude and Fugue in F minor BWV 857, Mozart's piano sonata in C major K309, and Chopin's Nocturne in E major Op 62, No 2. It's such nice music *sigh*. Which reminds me, I better go practise before my lesson.