taylorjhussey

[taylorjhussey]

Update 2/21/21

Hello!

I am extraordinarily bad at making blog posts. Unfortunately, it just falls straight to the bottom of my to do list and gets forgotten. So here’s an update post!

My fall semester at UNH went well! I continued performing in Wind Symphony and 4 O’Clock Jazz Band, as well as finally marching with the Wildcat Marching Band! It was certainly a unique season, and I enjoyed my time on the field even with no games. It was my first real marching season ever!

Over the break, I participated in Sō Percussion’s Collaborative Workshop. It was an all-online version of their usual SōSI offerings, and I had an amazing time meeting wonderful collaborators across disciplines and getting moved waaaay out of my comfort zone creating tracks for Finola Merivale’s “falling flames” as well as creating a piece inspired by Bora Yoon using found sounds! 

I’m taking Advanced Choral Conducting with Dr. Alex Favazza this semester, and supplementing it with Treble Choir. I’m loving being able to sing with a choir again, something I haven’t done since freshman year, and we sound great. I’m learning a lot with Dr. Favazza about gesture as well as rehearsal technique!

This semester, I will be performing the third movement of Ney Rosauro’s “Timpani Concerto” with the UNH Wind Symphony! Link to come. UNH went remote about a week ago, so our rehearsals have been on hold, but I’m confident in our ensemble!

Later this semester, I’ll be performing my Junior Recital! I’ll also be posting a link to this, as well as other promo materials. April 25th at 2pm!

I think that’s all I really need to talk about. See you soon!

[taylorjhussey]

Update 9/6/2020

Woops I haven’t posted here since March. I’m very good at this.

I, surprisingly, have been busy since March. Whether it’s been managing my mental health or practicing my butt off or teaching...

Some things I’ve done:

I started the Facebook group “University Percussionists” and started our weekly hang outs.

I got about a third of the way through the Wilcoxon Challenge before realizing that churning out an etude a day to post felt disingenuous and wasn’t the image I wanted to be presenting.

I bought a practice marimba. That was an investment.

I received the “The Giver” scholarship from Artifact Percussion, and I am so, so thankful.

I started to focus more on growing my own lesson studio in preparation for the fall (and future!).

I auditioned for a spot on the snare line in the Wildcat Marching Band, and will now be marching with them in their 101st season!

Coming back to school, I know that I improved a lot over the past few months. I feel more confident in my abilities and my ability to practice effectively. Hopefully, I will be able to keep that ball rolling over my hectic schedule!

I’m wiped after my first week of classes. Marching band (my first week ever!), four classes (two gen eds, orchestration, and analysis), and auditions, I want to sleep for a bit. But I feel that this semester has started off on a good foot, and I hope I’ll be able to continue this feeling!

[taylorjhussey]

COLA Student Spotlight

Hey! I’m now featured on the UNH COLA website!

https://cola.unh.edu/spotlight/taylor-hussey-22

Check it out!

[taylorjhussey]

End of Year Review 19-20

Hoo boy. 

At some point in the fall, I popped into Nate Jorgensen’s office to inquire about jazz band. I’ve played trumpet in jazz band before, in high school. I had saw some “TBA” spots listed on his roster, and I was ready to slide in on third or fourth trumpet. Jazz band was on my bucket list (to do before I graduate)... I did not expect to be handed the second trumpet folder on my first day. Not only was I not sure my chops were up for it, but I am not comfortable enough on trumpet to improvise. I don’t speak that language well enough to form sentences on my own. Give me stuff to read out loud. But, I pushed myself, took a solo that wasn’t completely terrible on the winter concert, and I’m pretty proud of myself. That ended up being our last concert of the year.

Wind Symphony was a challenge for me this year. I don’t want to go into detail here for many, many reasons, but I had a lot of personal challenges that were interfering with my performance. I’m not proud of my work this year. We, as a whole, did some great things, performing at the Palace Theater in Manchester, worked with Paul Dooley, went into the cave on the Sethian node, and performed Boysen’s tenth symphony. We were in the middle of preparing for a recording session of Erika Svanoe’s music. We had commissioned and premiered her work “Mary Shelley meets Frankenstein: A Promethean Tango” in the fall.

Our last concert of the year, however, featured Michael Shun’s first symphony. I am so, so incredibly grateful for the experience of premiering a close friend’s symphony. That, to me, is huge. Being able to tell my friend’s story is something I will never forget. Also it slaps and when I get a recording I’m going to show it off like a proud mama.

So, I’m not proud of my experience with Wind Symphony. But that’s okay, I can write that off and focus on other areas of my life.

Symphony Orchestra was an experience. We played The Planets. We played a significant amount of Vaclav Nelhybel’s music. We were in the rehearsal process for the New England Triptych before everything stopped. I feel that as a whole, Symphony Orchestra plays a solid role in my life, but not a large one. That doesn’t mean I don’t love my colleagues and time there dearly, though. 

Personally, I am more proud of my growth as a musician this year than I was freshman year. I learned more rep, started solidifying a practice routine, and started becoming more detail oriented. I began to think more about the physical aspects of my playing, both to be visually appealing and sustainable. My private instructor commented on my confidence growing. I was beginning to bring these skills into Symphony Orchestra when we stopped. 

Some concrete skills I improved on were my keyboard familiarity on both the smaller keyboards and marimba. Moon Chasers by Mark Ford really helped with that. I have noticed my memorization skills are improved. My sight reading skills on mallet instruments are still lacking (because of the aforementioned keyboard familiarity- something I was working on before we left) but they’ve improved marginally. My timpani playing has improved, my ears are better and I focused on creating better, more specific sounds for the situations I was in. Next year I want to focus on creating better tuning maps and connecting with the drums. 

Piano was fine. Brass and Woodwind methods were fine (though we mostly missed out on bassoon and flute). I’ve played those instruments before, and learned more about teaching them. The norm. 

Spring semester I started taking trumpet lessons with Professor Zielinski. Taking lessons with someone else is always nice because you get to see different approaches to teaching lessons, and to teaching musical concepts. Nancy and Professor Zielinski are similar, yet very different. Trumpet has always been an escape, sort of, for me, allowing me to be musical without stressing over percussion things, and I want to be the best player I can be. But I don’t have to stress over it. 

The transition to distance learning was... mostly okay. I went P/F in two classes (my gen ed, and Music History). I couldn’t keep up with them. I don’t want to get into my mental health, this post is already really long, but depression came back and started mingling with anxiety. I didn’t fail any of my classes though. Conducting I went mostly okay, but not getting live feedback to what you’re doing is hard. Theory and Ear Training went exactly the same, maybe better because I had more time to focus on them without having a million ensembles. Juries burnt me out completely, my water key pad needed to be replaced except I didn’t know that so I thought my chops were dying, and I just didn’t want to play percussion anymore. 

And to an extent... I still don’t. It’s been a couple weeks since juries and I haven’t done an organized practice session. I’m exhausted on so many levels and just want to melt into my bed and play video games. 

I don’t know what the future holds for me (or for anyone). But I know it’s there.

[taylorjhussey]

Mid-semester review

Well, here I am, sitting with my laptop in bed on what I suppose is Easter Sunday (what day is it?). I just finished cleaning out my Gmail inbox of over 2000 unread emails. 

It truly did not take long for me to drop the blog thing, huh? School ramped up and I had tests, quizzes, and concerts galore before everything slammed to a halt during Spring Break. I had a few successes, our equipment manager and I finally made new auxiliary tables to replace our old, torn apart ones that were giving us splinters. My grades were really great, and I actually understood the material I was learning. We were just starting rehearsals for our percussion ensemble. I also got permission from the department to audit trumpet lessons.

I also had a few hardships. My mental health never truly got back on track until about March, with more anxiety and depression symptoms than I was used to. I had some interpersonal conflicts, and some setbacks in my ensembles. I wasn’t happy with my playing or how I was (perceiving how I was) being treated. 

And then isolation. I’m home now, using my attic as a studio. Without my ensembles, I’ve been able to focus more on my individual practice on both percussion and trumpet. I can also focus on my schoolwork, as hard as some of it is now online. I’ve been using this time like I usually use my summers, refocusing on my long-term goals and building the blocks I need to get there. I’ve applied to a few jobs and have started working on a few projects I want to get going in the fall (if we have classes...). Though two of my personal projects this spring are on hold right now, I hope that they will be able to happen in August. 

In the end, I am proud of the steps I have taken this year in terms of growing up professionally. I’ve got two “real” teaching jobs, and I’m learning how to use my voice to advocate for my ideas and others. I got some real goals done this year and made progress in my career. I’m thankful for that.

One of my professors likes to say “prepare for the worst, hope for the best”. So that’s what I am going to do.

[taylorjhussey]

Support Each Other

As I scrolled through the channels this morning, I came across one of the Premier League’s soccer games (I think Newcastle and Chelsea were playing). I started to hear the cheers of the crowd underneath the announcer’s play-by-play. My mind went to my experiences playing with the UNH Beast of the East pep band. I thoroughly enjoy being there for my team, even though I’m not the kind of person that wearing UNH gear from head to toe, day after day. I’m not sucked into the school pride thing. But the experience of being there in the rink and cheering on my team, supporting people who are doing what they love, is one of my favorite things to do. 

Going to see live music is the same thing. Supporting musicians in doing what they love, whether it be being at your local jam or professional orchestra, or local middle school. That experience of supporting your community is one of the best feelings. Here at UNH I am lucky to be able to see my friends perform at least once a week at our student recitals, twice a semester in our ensemble’s concerts, and of course everyone’s junior and senior recitals. It is important for us, as humans, to support each other in endeavors that fill our hearts, whether that is sports or the arts.

[taylorjhussey]

Community

My high school years were about band, band, and more band; a story that a lot of music majors share. I spent hours of my time both in and outside of school in the band room, either in rehearsal or practicing or doing other chores. That room was my safe space, and I wanted to give back to and maintain the space that made me who I am.

To me, music is about community. Giving back to my high school band was the way I helped my own community; I made great friends while setting up chairs and tables, moving percussion equipment across the building, and doing fundraisers for our program. Our music community was built on the sense of service that each one of us felt to different degrees. Every student was responsible for their own chair at the end of the day. Every student had something to contribute to this whole. This shared sense of responsibility brought us all together. 

You can give back to your community, both musical and otherwise, through acts of service. Do things that aren’t expected of you. Stay after concerts you didn’t perform in to put equipment away. Stay after rehearsal to make sure all the chairs and stands are away. Help percussionists if they need it. Volunteer to play in events around the area, or when your instrument is needed. Use your strengths and skills to build those around you up, not just as individuals but as a group. Dedicate your time to making your community as strong as it can be. Care.

[taylorjhussey]

View this post on Instagram

hi everyone! i had the urge to practice piano, and so i did. i’m sorry the recording is so clunky! i’m reading out of a book i found in one of the “free” piles in the pcac halls, called john thompson’s modern course for the piano. this is a little piece by robert schumann. it’s not the smoothest, and i can see i have some work to do on my right hand (unfortunately my left hand is covered but there’s some cool stuff there) but i’ve come a little more far in my piano journey. i hope one day i’ll be able to accompany choirs with more ease!

A post shared by taylor (@dmitryshostakovich) on Dec 28, 2019 at 5:49pm PST

[taylorjhussey]

What I Learned from Cello Lessons

I want to start this post off by saying that I am not skilled at the cello in the slightest. I’m pursuing my BM in Music Education with a focus on percussion.

I finished my one semester of String Methods and said to myself,

 “Wow! I understand nothing about strings.” 

Through no fault of my professor! Coming to the orchestral world later in life as a musician is overwhelming. There is so much to do and take in. I’ve lived through a choral and a band program. I had learned to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on violin, cello, and bass.

The thought of one day being placed in front of a group of young, bright eyed musicians with string instruments in their hands struck fear into my heart. I had never been in their position, who was I to then tell them what to do?

So I put myself in their shoes. Or, as close as I could get during the summer. I am extremely lucky to have made friends with the cello teacher at my high school’s lesson program, so when I approached her, she immediately took me in. It almost happened too fast, I went in for a chat with my band director and walked out with a cello and Suzuki book one.

It never stopped feeling that fast; Week after week, I practiced as much as my hands would let me (about 20 minutes a day) and still felt I had very little grasp on anything cello related. Here I was with a stellar teacher and 10 years of musical experience, and I was struggling to play my scales. I couldn’t get through one exercise without wanting to rip my hair out about intonation or articulation or things that I should know how to do by now but struggled with. I understand that a new instrument will always present its own challenges, but the cello was a new beast. I had learned the wind instruments in little time. With strings, I was so lost.

And I’m still lost. And so will be my future students, one day. Sure, I learned some basic cello skills (hand positions, shifting, majority of Suzuki books one and two), but the most important things I learned weren’t that simple. I know now that I should probably never be in front of an orchestra. I learned how it feels to sit in that chair in front of someone you respect so dearly, and not be able to do what they’re asked of you, though it seems so simple. I learned the feeling of having a strong disconnect between what you want to do and what your teacher wants you to do, and what you can actually do. 

So I let myself struggle. There are still some videos up on my instagram. But now, I’ll be better equipped to help my students who struggle as I did.