The school year is starting this week here in Oak Harbor. With my wife and kids heading back to school, I have a number of work goals I'm setting here at home. I've got a lot of stuff I want to record, not only my own stuff, but lots of other works, too. I also want to get to know repertoire more, including solos, etude books and orchestral music. I really want to improve my repertoire knowledge because I plan to apply for doctoral study in a couple years. Plus, I just want to know repertoire to help my students.
A big part of my repertoire study, though, will be orchestral music. There was a period of my life where orchestral music was my life...and I really miss that. I feel disconnected from the orchestral world. That, and there are major works that I don't even know yet, like Mahler's 8th and 9th symphonies, and the Rachmaninoff symphonies and piano concertos, as well as the Wagner operas. And, there's works that I know pretty well but have never played the horn parts of before, like some of the Strauss tone poems or the more difficult Classical-era symphonies.
I also want to get more familiar with music written more recently. No, I'm not talking about the weird stuff, what we associate as "modern" music. I'm talking about works that are tonal and have roots to the Romantic era. There are some really great pieces out that I haven't heard yet. So I want to search them out.
This is going to be a fun year.
Take care and value music.