I grew up here in Wellington and I really like the city and its music culture. When the time came to apply to universities, I realised I didn’t want to leave quite yet. I’d also been attending the New Zealand School of Music’s young musicians programme while I was at school, so studying here for my degree felt like a natural progression. The talent I’d seen coming out of the NZSM had always really impressed me, and when I found out for myself how good the teaching was I knew I had to stay.
My week starts with a 90-minute lesson with my principal violin teacher, which is a great way to kick things off. Next I have strings class, which brings together all the string players in my year group. The function of the class changes from week to week: sometimes we focus on one aspect of technique, or play as individuals and get feedback from the group, and at other times we all rehearse something together. At the moment we’re working on the Bartök Divertimento and the two Haydn cello concertos, with a member of faculty playing the solo part. The university orchestra rehearses two days per week -right now the repertoire we’re studying includes The Planets by Holst. I’m studying for an ethnomusicology paper, too, as academic work makes up a quarter of my marks in this, my final year. Just today I had an interesting lecture about different kinds of copyright and its relationship with traditional music.