Taming of the Shrew is Coming! (Alice Hietala)

Hi Everyone, though this isn't strictly music related, I suppose it does have to do with recent grad activities. I'm in the upcoming Summer Shakespeare production of The Taming of the Shrew. I've got four character roles. It should be fun.

Anyway, for those of you still kicking around London in June, come see the play. We just had our first read-through of the script and meeting of the cast and already I can tell you it's going to be a fabulous show!

The show runs from June 23-27 in the evening. We haven't picked an exact location , but it'll be outside on campus somewhere. I'll post again closer to the date with more details.

I hope to see some of you there. Shrew is a wild, funny, dirty, somewhat violent and slightly controversial show, so you know you'll have fun!

-Alice

Alice Add's her Two Cents (Alice Hietala)

Hello Everyone,

This is a wonderful idea. Blogging is a great way to add your own two cents whenever you have time without the all the constraints of a Facebook group. So, a big thank you to Erika for starting the idea of keeping in touch and to David for actually starting this blog. In the complete craziness that was the last day of classes, I pretty much forgot it was the last day of classes and didn't realize that of all the people I was casually seeing around the faculty as normal, many of them I would never see again. I didn't say good-bye to many of them, which has made me really sad (especially since I'm delaying my graduation until the Fall, so I won't necessarily see everyone in June). So I really like this whole idea.

I myself started my own blog about my various artistic endeavors a few months ago. I've been writing about many of my thoughts and experiences in my last few months of school and I'm excited to contribute to this blog as well. So, take a look at mine if you like and if I don't see many of you in person for a while, I'll at least be seeing you around cyberspace.

-Alice

Inaugural Address (David Lacalamita)

In the spirit of Erika North's email, I created this blog and Gmail account in the hopes that we can continue the dialogue that defined many of our experiences here, and to continue to keep in touch with one another as we spread ourselves across the globe. For the records, here is Erika's email:

Hello Graduating class of 2009 and anyone else who may be interested,

I have been talking to many of you and many of you feel what I am feeling, the worry about the potential loss of brain cells post graduation, as well as the sadness at the potential loss of communication between all of us.

I would like to dispel this potential by starting an email dialogue whereby we could communicate with one another about interesting books we read, pertaining to anything music related from performance to education to philosophy. As well, we could use this as a tool to send recordings of our performances or our classes performances or compositions that we have written. Other things we could include are peoples masters and PHD thesises or articles that we write, or music we like and find interesting. Basically a resource to keep connected and keep learning.

I was thinking we could do this through email or facebook. Thoughts on that? Also, if we decide to do this through email I will need you to send me your new email addresses as our uwo addresses will be deleted soon :(

Please let me know your thoughts and if you are interested.

Study or procrastinate hard and hope to hear from you.

Erika :)

I'm planning on starting up a website in the near future that could play the same role as this blog, but for now, this is the easiest substitute.

Ideally, this can be a place where people can drop a line when something significant happens in your life (like getting your first real job, moving to a new country, travelling, getting married etc). For those who are interested, it could become a serious forum for discussion of important issues, musical or otherwise. In fact, it may be even more productive than some of the late-night conversations that I've experienced here in that there will be an actual record of the process.

Blogs are easy to keep tabs on with RSS feeds. If you don't know what that is, I'll just explain that it's a way of keeping tabs on when a site has been updated (so that you don't have to check all the time - only when something new is posted) and leave the figuring out to you if you so choose.

Who knows how long this will last, but it might be nice to have available. We can post links to other websites, our own personal blogs, interesting articles, etc. As a communal space, there is potential for this to become quite messy, but after an initial rush, I'm sure things will subside and become more manageable. Also, for the sake of clarity...:

• Please post your name at the end of your posts and perhaps in the Title as I've done here
  
• Please use the account only to initiate a thread/start a new entry. From then on, you can just reply on the site using the guest feature or using an account of your own
• Add your contact info to the contact list in the Gmail account (dwfom.grads09@gmail.com)

Having said all this, let the discourse begin! Start big ("Who cares about classical music anyway?") or small (thank yous and special mentions - even reminiscing is fair game).

Expect an entry from me soon.

- Dave