Sorry it has been so long since I last wrote! Over the past few weeks not a whole lot has happened. I have just been doing a lot of practicing and have been trying to get some extra practicing in during the break. Today I had a great two hour lesson with Professor Amano! I hadn't seen him in a few weeks so it was really nice to work through things in my songs. We haven't decided which song I am doing for the youth guild competition in February but I am still aiming for Mendelssohn's Variations Seriuses.

The past few weeks have been a bit difficult for me as I have tried to work through some of my own fears and struggles, but with many talks with my mom and some personal experiences, my whole view of life and piano changed. I was in my room one day looking at the quotes on my walls when I read a quote by President Thomas S. Monson. He said, "Our task is to become our best selves. One of God's greatest gifts to us is the joy of trying again, for no failure ever need be final." This brought great comfort to me because before I read the quote I had been stressing out about my next competition. I was worrying about my song and what would happen if I lost. For some reason I had gotten into my mind that if I lose this competition then it would all be over. But what I forgot was that I can always try again. Not only with piano but with anything in life I can try, try again. With my mom we talked about taking risks and not worrying about what will happen. I have decided to take a risk and just be excited about my next competition and the new steps I am taking in life because the only thing that matters is that I try my hardest and have fun!

Today as I was practicing piano, I had an interesting thought pop into my head.  I was playing through one of my songs and kept making mistakes when I realized playing a piece of music is a lot like life.  When you play through a song you are learning and working on, we all tend to make a lot of mistakes.  When we make a mistake we stop and work on that section until we get it perfect and then we move on.  In life, when we make mistakes we need to stop, assess the mistake, figure out how we can fix it, fix it, and then move on.  We are all going to make lots of mistakes in our lives.......but we just have to fix it, learn from it, and keep moving forward. 

Yesterday was a great day!  This week I have been feeling really tired because I have been a little sick, but yesterday I felt great!  My practicing went really well since I had more energy.  I got a full practice and I only worked on the Mendelssohn Variations.  It is pretty long and there are so many detailed things that it took me three hours just to get through about eight pages.  I feel like I am really starting to get the Mendelssohn under my fingers.  I can't wait to compete with it!

I would like to thank everyone for all of their love and support!  Also, thank you for purchasing my CDs.  So far today I have gotten part of my practicing done and I will be finishing it up in a little bit.  Lately, I have been working on Aria Variata by J.S. Bach and Variations Seriuses by Felix Mendelssohn.  I am almost done memorizing the Mendelssohn.  It has been a while since I have had to memorize any songs so memorizing the Bach and Mendelssohn has been a bit challenging.  I feel so good though when I finish memorizing a variation.  It makes me feel like I really am accomplishing something.  Sometimes it can be discouraging when you work forever on a song and it never seems to improve -- but you just have to keep working at it and eventually it will get there.  I have to remind myself this everyday.

Exciting News!

There are so many different aspects of music:  sight reading, ear training, competitive repertoire, accompanying, theory -- and now I can add studio recording!  I completed recording two cds at Symphonix Recording Studio.  One is entitled, "For the Holidays" which is a collection of holiday and winter piano solos and the other is entitled, "Favorites."  It's a collection of some of my favorite piano solos that I love to play.  I'm really impressed with how well they turned out.  I sold several at a holiday boutique my mom had last weekend and I'm going to sell them through my blog also.  This is the creative "fundraiser" my mom and I put together to help cover costs of competing, traveling, camps, etc.  All piano music lovers are welcome to order one or both!  (The above picture is from piano camp at Utah State University last summer - we all had an amazing time!)

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Music makes the world a beautiful place!