Back in November of 2010 I was traveling with the Cincinnati Brass Quintet: we had just finished a week long tour of performing and teaching down in Houston and Dallas, Texas. In the late afternoon as I sat in the passenger seat of our mini-van, I recieved a call from my teacher at the University of Cincinnati's College Conservatory of Music, Professor Randy Gardner. He simply asked me if I would interested in a horn position with a Chinese orchestra. I think my first response was, "Um...what?" I had to appologize a few times because honestly I wasn't really prepared for that kind of question. "Hello Cecilia. How would you like to work in China?" Well, I said yes, of course. Mr. Gardner's initial question for me was further explained--I would be one of 3 or 4 names to be recommended for this position, there was not a guarentee that I would actually get the job.
The liason between Mr. Gardner and Yu Feng (the music director of the Central Opera Orchestra of Beijing) was Professor Mark Gibson (Professor of Music; Director, Orchestral Studies) who primarily conducts CCM's Philharmonia Orchestra. He also travels abroad, and in November was actually in China as a guest conductor there. I immediatly sent him an e-mail expressing my enthusiasm for the horn position in Beijing. He replied a couple weeks later (Facebook is banned in China and Mr. Gibson is so popular that his G-mail account was full! That's a lot of mail!) and gave me general information about the orchestra, the conductor, my salary, and the position I would be playing (co-principal). When asked if Yu Feng would like me to send a CD of excerpts, I was told, "No, that's not necessary. Yu Feng trusts my judgement." Well, I was thinking that this was shaping up to be a pretty easy way to get a first job. Oh how wrong I was.
At the beginning of the second week in December, Mr. Gibson e-mailed me instructing me to make and send a tape to Yu Feng. Well ok. That's great... I would have spent a lot of time over the past few weeks making a beautifully polished CD, but instead I'm told to mail the CD as quickly as possible. Oh goody. Let's just say that the second week in December was not exactly filled with all sorts of free-time: I had a dress rehearsal and performance of Schumann's Konzerstuck on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday through Sunday I was playing a Christmas gig at Kenwood Baptist Church called "The Living Christmas Tree"--a two hour musical extravaganza. During the days of this week, I was completing my final project for my Managing a Professional Career Class, and working on a recording project with my woodwind quintet for the Fischoff competition. BUT! If Mr. Gardner has prepared his students for anything, it's making a great audition CD in a very short time. And as luck would have it, it took a couple more days to get the mailing address to Beijing. So in all my "free time," I recorded and recorded and recorded some more. I must have had over 25 hours of material to weed through... I would record for 3 or 4 hours and then I had to listen back (this was really good for me though... every day I became more efficient at both recording and keeping track of the takes I wanted). In the end I submitted the following:
The opening to Strauss' Till Eulenspiegel
An excerpt from Brahms' Concerto for Piano No. 2
The low-tutti section from Shostakovich Symphony No. 5
The opening to Ein Heldenleben
An excerpt from Brahms' Symphony No. 3
An excerpt from Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3
A few days after I shipped this CD, I was also asked to submit a DVD of a recent performance, so I sent them my Masters Recital performance of the Brahms Trio for Piano, Violin, and Horn (thanks again to Therese Akkerman and Josh Ulrich).
Well, fast forward to the second week of January in 2011. I finally hear that my materials were accepted and that Yu Feng was very impressed with my playing... hooray! Mr. Gibson sends me an e-mail notifying me that I will be the newest principal of the Central Opera Orchestra of Beijing. Awesome... all that work paid off!!! To date, they have not told me when they'll be flying me out... not that it's a big deal... I mean, moving 11,000 miles away is as easy as cake. haha... oh well, life is an adventure, isn't it? So I'm still in school and basically living life normally... I figure I won't start moving things to storage until I get a definite fly-out date. And learning Mandarin is certainly going to be very interesting.
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