The Graduate

I am now a graduate, with great distinction, of the oldest and most prestigious carillon school in the world. Huzzah!

Some of the adventure leading up: I'd been working VERY hard at my practice carillon - 8hrs per day, with frequent overtime. But even that wasn't enough. In order to actually have something to show for my thesis work on the day of my defense, I needed to call in the reserves. The Saturday before my presentation, I had 4 carillon students come to the workshop to spend half a day helping with the building. Two came back to help the day before my final exam, performance, and thesis defense. Many thanks to those students! One of the students made a movie of the first work day -- you can see that at the bottom.

On the day before my exam and defense, the plan was to assemble the thing, get it to the presentation room, and be done by 3pm to leave for a concert I was playing in the Netherlands that evening, 3 hours away. When 3pm came, almost all the parts were ready, but none of the assembly had taken place. I had to board the train north, and one very dedicated guy (the camera clown in the movie below) stayed after I left to do the assembly -- all-in-all, pulling a 10 hour day on a project that wasn't even his. Many MANY thanks to Richard!

I played my concert in the Netherlands, which was a nice break from all the stress, and a nice warm up for getting back into the performing mindset. The trains didn't run late enough to get me back to Belgium, So I slept over in Amersfoort with Toru, a student at the Dutch school. Toru will be giving me a run for my money in the upcoming competitions, but for now he's the guy I drink tea with way too early in the morning.
At 5:55am I was awake, then jogging to the train station, then on a 3hr train ride back to Belgium. Back in Mechelen, I went straight to the workshop and spent the two hours before my thesis defense adjusting and smoothing out the action of the manuals key-by-key. I got about 20 of them done. Enough for a demo. 10 minutes after the scheduled start of my defense I walked through the door carrying half a practice carillon. The results were very positive.
I ran home, charged some recording equipment, burned some CDs of my written thesis to hand in, and climbed the tower to warm up for my final exam concert. I played on less than 6 hours of sleep, and though it wasn't perfect, I think it was quite good and I'm pleased with it as a step forward in learning to perform on high pressure occasions. Here's a clip: The carillon's automatic play mechanism decided to join in for a bit, but if you ignore that, it was probably the best piece of the exam.




Now I crash for a bit. There's still a lot of work to be done -- the second half of the practice carillon; perfecting the first half; preparing for 2 big competitions. But... I get a day off. And if I get my way, I'm not going to do things with as much crazy as this past month has been.

So For now, enjoy this video, made by one of the students at the school, of my practice carillon in the making. We were doing a lot more work than it portrays, but I guess you don't really film too much of the working parts: