Day 1 in the books

Day 1 is complete.

 

It started this morning at 9 am with a group class at Sacred Heart Church. We have about 10 cellists in the class, who will be divided amongst two instructors.  

SummerKeys spreads its practice facilities around the town.  Some are at the SummerKeys headquarters.  Some are at churches.  Some are in practice buildings.  Some are in houses.

Instructor Joachim Woitun

More cellists:

The outside of this particular practice facility (Sacred Heart Church fellowship hall):

 

Some of the homes along main street:

 

I'll have a short video tour up probably on Friday.  I recorded one but wasn't happy with it, so I'm going to rerecord it.

 

After our group lesson, I returned to the SummerKeys headquarters, shown here:

And here's some of the practice rooms in the back of the SummerKeys headquarters (each one has a piano):

And two more (the door on the left leads to the SummerKeys office):

 

The practice rooms are available to anyone if they're not in use.  On this particular day however, they were all in use.  So, while I waited on the time for my private lesson to arrive, I made my own practice room in the backyard of the SummerKeys building:

Personally, I think I got the best space.

My individual lesson was at 1:30, with 2 hours of scheduled practice afterwards.  (Scheduled practice means a practice room is scheduled for you)

My instructor certainly seems to be knowledgeable and well-credentialed. We've spent our time thus far working on new drills for intonation and scales, as improving intonation was one of the areas I identified as an area of need.

On day 2 I'll have the same basic setup, but with the addition of a coached ensemble group in the late afternoon.

I'm having a blast at SummerKeys.  It's great to be able to focus totally on the cello for 5, 6 or 7 hours without having to worry about other things in life.  While I haven't noticed a huge increase in my ability after one day (of course) I can't imagine that all this is going to do anything but help.  

I also love the attitude of SummerKeys.  "Come as you are…"  It is incredibly welcoming and encouraging.  Even people who have never touched an instrument or read a note are welcome.  That's certainly rare among summer music programs, if not unique.

More tomorrow...