First week of school is over! It does feel good to be back actually. Nice to be up early in the morning to get some focused practice and afternoons can be spent doing other things. Really looking forward to ensemble rehearsals starting again, especially orchestra. With a new head of Orchestral Studies, the orchestral experience is going to be so different. I have this feeling he will not be the same conductor as he is at TPO. But oh well, that remains to be seen.

I just attended a masterclass yesterday by tuba virtuoso, Sergio Carolino. A fantastic musician indeed! I must say I was intimidated by his teaching. I haven't been out of my comfort zone in such a long time and yesterday I was really out of it. But his masterclass was a really good wake up call for me especially on my air usage. I realised I haven't been using the right air all these while and when I became conscious of it while practising today, my sound just became so much better! So definitely a worthwhile lesson from the master.

Something else I attended yesterday was OMM's performance of Mahler 5. I must say it was very brave of OMM to even choose the work. It is huge and requires high levels of technical ability from every musician. Nevertheless, they did pull through the 80-minute work with many fantastic and magical moments within. However, I really do hope they proceed with caution when thinking about doing more of such works as it is treading on dangerous ground when these works demand such high technical ability and coordination of phrase-passing. Too many lapses and the performance will just take a turn for the worst. I do have faith in the orchestra and hopefully many more interesting projects will come along in the future. This year is definitely full of them as they prepare to go on tour to London, Bratislava and Prague. Hopefully I'll be joining them on tour!

Alright, shall find other ways to kill time before tonight's SSO performance of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. Till next time, bye!