Sorry for not updating earlier, but I want to let you know that I have a new site at helengliu.info, where you can find all things music related to me.  I will also be keeping this blog up about things outside of music, so please keep on visiting/reading. 

6-month update

To sum it up: Life is good since I’ve moved to Boston in September and lived with Randy in the beautiful cozy North End of Boston.  It has been a crazy 6 months of schedule juggling between my freelance work and part-time work at NEC.  Some of the freelance stuff I do includes mostly orchestra playing (the Orchestra of Indian Hill, New Bedford, Nashua and New Hampshire, Gordon College) and some chamber music (performing in Harvard Baroque Chamber Ensemble and NEC student recitals).  I’ve attempted to stay involved with teaching, but so much performance opportunities have popped up that I tend to make playing a priority over teaching… for now.  Although, I am on the faculty of the Bradford School of Music (North Andover, MA), which is good because it’s a completely new facility with excellent technology system to promote a better learning environment.  I’m not sure exactly how using the computer will better my teaching, but I’m excited to experiment and find out. 

So far it’s been pretty manageable in terms of finding productive things to do.  Besides playing, I work as a Research Associate at the Center for Music-in-Education at NEC, where Randy and I along with a few others, form the Research Team, as we help schools in the MIE National Consortium in designing their music integrated academic curriculum.  It’s hard and tedious work in collecting and analyzing data, but I’m sure it will pay off in the near future with ending the budget cuts to arts/music programs and opening up new job positions for music teachers and researchers like us. 

Waitiki is doing well, although I haven’t performed with them once yet.  But thanks to Tim, I’ve started doing studio recording for Cape Verdean Pop music.  For now, it’s just a side project, but who knows.  Maybe it’ll grow into something huge?

Exciting News!
Randy made an amazing proposal on July 27, at Tanglewood (where we first met at B.U.T.I in 1997).  Read all about it on our new blog!

Right now, we’re happily living together in Boston, but we aren’t settled yet.  I’m scheduled to perform Randy’s L’Ours Chinois with Project Copernicus in Miami this weekend, and when we return, we have to make our big move to the North End of Boston, aka Boston’s version of Little Italy.  Stayed tuned for a housewarming/engagement party!

New website feature: I used PHPicalendar to improve my concert calendar. It’s a great tool and it’s FREE!

Pre-proposal pic

pottery is cool!!

oooohh ahhh

For the past several weeks, I have been going to this pottery wheel throwing class with my friend Leewen.  It has been one of my best decisions yet. It’s so relaxing to do this after practicing or when I’m under a lot of stress.  As you can see above, I’ve made some pretty interesting things.  Check out my flickr page for more!

birthdays

First of all, Happy Birthday shout-out to three people: my mom, Lee-wen, and Kyung!  Hope you all are having a good day, despite the falling snow. 

As I’m writing this, I’m listening to nice arrangement of a piece by Ravel played by the Turtle Island String Quartet.  The melody is still puzzlingly familiar, but I’ve given up the urge to figure out the name of the actual piece.  I’m also recovering from a busy social weekend.  On Saturday, I met up with Megan and her friends Morgan and AJ, whom I went to high school with and vaguely remember.  But it’s so nice to know that the past doesn’t matter on how you think of them in the present moment.  It kind of makes me wonder what were they like in high school and why didn’t I get to know them back then?  AJ is such a sweet, down-to-earth guy with lots of funny stories.  It seems that since high school we’ve all experienced a lot of things and went different directions, but in a general sense, we’re all at the same points of our lives, working and being in relationships and marriage, etc.  Essentially, we are all going through the same things in our adult lives and it’s good to reconnect every now and then to find ourselves to be all on the same level.