Hello Everyone!! Happy summer! Exams have finished and the holiday season has finally started. During April I had the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain’s Spring Residency, followed dangerously closely by two months of iGCSE exams. The residency was absolutely brilliant, our repertoire was Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Teenek, and a tabla concerto, what a selection! I was very excited to see my friends again and had loads of fun making music all day every day for two weeks. The concert at the Royal Festival Hall was absolutely magical and the two school concerts proceeding that was also exciting, after both of them, me and members of the percussion section were badgered by curious little school kids about our instruments (I was playing a celeste).  It goes without saying that it was a lot of hard work, but I definitely enjoyed everything! I am looking forward to the summer residency, we will be performing at BBC PROMS!! It is happening on August 6th at Royal Albert Hall, please do come and watch (and give me a little wave!)

iGCSE exams have been pretty stressful, although (hopefully) there were no problems and it went quite smoothly. The exams aren’t overly complex, the main problem was the large time span over which the exams were spread and also having to revise for some subjects that I don’t particularly like. It was particularly difficult to find the energy to practice the piano during this period and I need to thank my mum and piano teacher for motivating me.  We had quite a peculiar arrangement for the exams: I had already moved out of Sevenoaks to Westminster, so the day before each exam me and mum would stay in an airbnb in Sevenoaks, it was quite disorienting waking up and never knowing where you are. But overall, they went well!

After the summer residency, I will be travelling back to Taiwan (my home country). I will hopefully be competing in several (six to be exact) competitions there to try out and practice performing my new repertoire. I will also be rehearsing and performing my concerto (Rhapsody on the Theme of Paganini by Rachmaninoff) with a small orchestra there, so I’m absolutely positively terrified but also excited at the same time. Out of my pieces, Liszt’s Rhapsody no 12 is my favorite and I can’t wait to perform it, you will often find me practicing it with a manic smile on my face…

After summer, I will be starting sixth form, doing A levels, at Westminster School. I’m very excited because it is a beautiful school and has a wonderful music department, which I have already been in many times for my scholarship and induction days. I also recently went to an Oxford open day to look at my options in the future and will be attending Cambridge’s open day in a few days!

Have a good summer,

Eliza.