London, Here I Come!

Hello everyone!

Last week I returned to Bloomington from New York, where I spent Thanksgiving break getting to know Prokofiev's Violin Duo, seeing old friends, and of course, doing lots of cooking for the holiday. Even though it was nice to spend a few peaceful days at home, the feeling of quiet was spiked by some very exciting news - I have received a Marshall Scholarship! The application process began during the summer, culminating in a final interview at the British Consulate in Chicago last week. I am so happy to be free of the paperwork and off to a new chapter of my musical life! The Marshall Scholarship will fund my Masters degree at the Royal Academy starting next fall, which means I will be moving to LONDON this summer! I am so excited to join and explore the incredibly vibrant music world of this phenomenal city. And for an Austen-reading, Shakespeare-reciting, BBC-watching fan like me, this is truly nothing short of a dream come true.

To say that November was a very busy month is an understatement. On the 1st, I performed my third Artist Diploma recital - only one more to go! - and afterwards I literally ran to Auer Hall to play Matthew Peterson's solo violin piece, Nacken, for one of the composition department recitals, and then made a beeline for the Indianapolis airport; I flew to London, where I auditioned for the Royal Academy and got to spend some time becoming acquainted with this beautiful conservatory. Before leaving for my final Marshall interview in Chicago and ultimately my "home for the holiday" vacation, I played twelve concerts! Four of these were part of the Midwest Composers Symposium, which is a coming together of composers from the universities of Michigan, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana. What an amazing event! It was so exciting to see so many talented composers sharing their music together. Meanwhile that week, I also played three chamber music concerts for some of my friends' doctoral recitals; Beethoven's Septet is now one of my favorite chamber music works. :)

With only a few weeks of the semester left, I look forward to our final round of performances and projects at the Jacobs School. Cicely and I have two more duo recording sessions coming up in a few weeks, so we are steadily making progress with our new music CD project, In Real Time. After this month, there will only be one more session left before just the recording portion of the project is finished! This is truly a marvelous collection of modern duos, and working with the composers themselves like Bill Bolcom, Lera Auerbach, and Paul Moravec continues to be an amazing opportunity.

All for now. There is SNOW in Bloomington!
~Madalyn