Tag Archives: violin

My non-bucket Wish List 2013-14

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I have been reading a few bucket lists recently and I really liked some of the ideas on them but calling these things a bucket list freaks me out, I suppose because the idea is they’re stuff you want to achieve before you die, and once you’ve done them all… Well, I prefer to have a Yearly Wish List, or at the very most a sort of fantasy five year plan. I like the optimism of the assumption that everything on that list will come true sooner rather than later and the fluidity of always achieving your dreams/adding new ones.

I had completely forgotten I had written one of these Five Year Plan/Wish List things several years ago until the other day when something on it happened to come true (almost). Waaaay back in 2006 (OK, so longer than 5 years ago) I wished to one day play a solo at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. I forgot all about it until I was recently booked to play the second solo part in Vivaldi’s Double Concerto in A minor and the Concerto for two violins and cello with London Concertante (Thursday 12th September at 7:30pm, if anyone wants to come you can buy tickets here!) It resurrected my interest in long term wishing/life plans.

You may also remember that I promised to start sharing my usual “Hopes and wishes and dreams?… Yeurgh!” diary entries here in blog-form, despite my utter squeamishness about it, and this fits that category for sure! So, here’s a new non-bucket list, Wish List 2013-14, including some things from my old 2006 list which, lets face it, probably didn’t happen yet purely because I totally forgot to think about them:

 

Wish List 2013-14

* Play a solo (part) at St. Martin-in-the-Fields – hopefully soon to be ticked!

* Play a solo concerto at St. Martin-in-the-Fields

* Play at Wigmore Hall

* Play in a performance of Enescu’s Octet

* Have another baby (I think I will hold this off till the 2015 list!)

* Make a film (this could include writing/acting/directing)

* Appear in an episode of Poirot!

* Play Hermia in a Midsummer Night’s Dream

* Play in a big Symphony Orchestra (I’ve only ever done Concert/Chamber Orchestras professionally)

* Learn to surf

* Be fluent in another language (I’m pretty close in Romanian, but not close enough)

* Live for a year in New York

* Live in Italy

I have to say, the most amazing things I ever ticked off a similar list were on my list practically from birth (Ok, maybe from age 7 or 8) and they were to see the Northern Lights (2005 in Iceland..twice!) and to have children (I’m not sure I’m quite done there, but I couldn’t be happier with my two boys and if that was it for me, I’d still feel completely contented.) It’s an amazingly satisfying feeling. So having realised how awesome it feels to achieve even just one of these big things, I’m feeling motivated for more…

What’s on your list?

Violin Marathon for Matilda Mae – plans shaping up!

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So the Violin Marathon for Matilda Mae is shaping up to be a great, great plan! 

So far, my favourite ideas, which may or may not be feasible are as follows:

 

Location: my flat in London

Breaks allowed for eating, toilet and massage/physio

I will take requests, but you have to donate for this!

Live video link/internet streaming so people can tune in and see how I’m doing/submit requests online

Open house for people to drop in and have a drink while I play

Musician friends can show up and join me in some chamber music

If I’m really hurting and need a longer break, someone (Remus or a friend) must cover for me so someone is always playing.

This could be really cool I’m really looking forward to this, but I’d better get practising because if I did it now, I wouldn’t last four hours and I’d be in real trouble! 

Would love to hear from any musicians in particular with more ideas to make this even better!

 

Love

Coco xx

 

 

Plans, plans, exciting plans…

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I have so many creative things going round and round in my brain at the moment, I thought I’d write them all down, lest I forget to do one of them and in case it helps with planning…

First up, a Classical Babies ‘Winnie the Pooh’ Quartet Picnic!

I had such a good time planning Lucian’s 2nd Birthday Pooh-themed party and have so many props and things left over, it occurred to me on the day that I should transfer it all over to a Classical Babies concert! I want to have all the songs from the Winnie-the-Pooh DVD arranged for string quartet (I know someone who could do this amazingly, but it will be expensive so I may try to do some of them myself) and book my usual musician friends to play in the quartet with me. Then everyone can bring picnic blankets and I have some honey pots filled with treats and a picnic basket with bees buzzing out of it! I just can’t decide when to do it. Maybe the last concert of the Summer Season, in July. My themed special party concerts always have a great turn out but we’re a bit short on festivals, birthdays and special occasions this term so I need an excuse to roll out the prosecco again…

 

Next up, some more fundraising for The Lullaby Trust in memory of little Matilda Mae. Someone is running the Brighton marathon in her memory for her lovely mum Jennie (she of the Edspire blog) and Jennie asked if anyone would like to run too? I thought,

“Errrrm, noooooo!! I would not!”

But it got me thinking about a different kind of marathon that I could do, since my fingers are a darn sight fitter than my legs:

A Violin Marathon for Matilda Mae

Basically, I would get people to sponsor me to see how long I can play/practise the violin for continuously! I think, feasibly something like eight or nine hours might be the max without damaging my neck or wrist or muscles in my arms but I really I’m aiming for more than that if I can find a way to protect myself by having massage breaks, my physio mum on hand to deal with any aches and pains and regular loo breaks of five or ten minutes built into the rules! If, in my wildest dreams I managed to keep going for twelve hours or more I’m wondering what to do about noise through the night, whether it would be allowed to stop to sleep, or if I should lose a night and keep on going! But physically I’m not likely to last that long. Violin-playing pretty much does to your arms what running does to your legs and so you can imagine the effects after several hours. I’m also not working as much as a freelance violinist as I was pre-kids so I’m not in the same kind of shape as before where I could play six hours a day no problem. I will have to practise myself-in for a couple of weeks before, an hour, two hours adding more time every day – but this is great! It’s about time I got myself back into proper shape as a violinist and maybe did some auditions for other London orchestras (I work regularly with BBC Concert Orchestra – with whom I used to have a full time job – and the City of London Sinfonia who offered me my first regular paid work out of college several years ago, but never approached the others and I really should!) So, as well as raising money for a great cause I stand to gain from this too… It’s a win, win idea!!

The other question is, where should I do it? I need someone to look after my boys for the day or more it will take, so ideally my parents’ place in Cornwall where I will be this summer, since I need my mum on hand for physio anyway. But you need a LOT of sheet music to fill several hours and the big, full music cupboard I need access to is in our flat in London, which my husband also needs for his teaching, so I can’t even transport the lot of it down with me. I could play through the night in Cornwall without upsetting people, but in London possibly not, unless I persuade the neighbours and then I would keep the boys up… Though I could play with a practise mute to dampen the sound.

Then the question of who will verify that I keep playing… Will it be done on trust? Should I operate an open house system where people can come and listen whenever they like to see how I’m doing and grab a glass of wine and watch for a while, or maybe live-stream it on the internet (I have no idea how to do that by the way, but maybe someone can help me?) so people can log on to see if I’m still playing and time my breaks and anyone who’s curious as to what I’m playing for all those hours can have a listen! Questions, questions…. I’m really excited by the idea anyway, and any offers of help with setting up a sponsorship page, or a live-stream would be much appreciated!

Practising in front of the tennis at Wimbledon-time last year!

Practising in front of the tennis at Wimbledon-time last year!

 

I’m also planning Gabriel’s fourth birthday on the 4th July and a Planets Party for my astronomy-obsessed boy! I won’t waffle on about it here, but let my pinterest board do the talking. We promised to get him his first real bicycle with stabilisers, but now I’m wondering how smart that was as we just got Lucian a micro scooter so he can scoot with his brother and there’s really nowhere much he can safely ride around here. However, a promise is a promise, I just hope the scooter doesn’t get forgotten about. Too many vehicles in this house!

Then there’s my Reiki-attunement plans in the Summer, down in Cornwall and my plan to do a Classical Babies concert there in Gorran Haven, and new venues to find in Harpenden and elsewhere and my acting class I haven’t told you all about yet (I’m working on a Blanche Dubois monologue from A Streetcar Named Desire at the moment and have to do it in costume at Monday night’s class… I’ll keep you all posted another time!) So many plans and ideas in my brain and I didn’t tell you the half of them, but how useful this blog suddenly seems, to pin them all down and firm up my ideas. Feedback on all is welcome! Thank you… Coco xx

Driving Phobia & Walking for Tilda

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On Saturday 11th May, I got up at 6:30 and got two sleepy but acquiescent boys dressed and into the car. (Thank you Remus, for getting up to load the double buggy, several bags of spare clothes, snacks and lots of violins while I grabbed a cappuccino!). This sounds simple enough but for me, it was no mean feat: I have suffered for a long time from being massively driving-phobic. Despite having passed my test over two years ago and having some sporadic driving success for one year of that, even short journeys for me can involve delaying tactics, finding excuses to use public transport, and should I get in the car, usually some shaking and crying. Nevertheless, I had put this date in the diary a long time ago and it, being pretty inaccessible without a car, seemed the perfect goal to aim for to overcome my fears. I’ve driven on and off for two years but when even a successful 160 mile stint to Cornwall didn’t cure me I lost all hope of ever being a “real” driver. But finally, I had something to drive to, where the destination was key, where getting there, and showing up on time and in one piece meant more to me than clinging on to my fear. And it seemed to work! My phobia came to a head a few weeks before when I found myself on my sofa, twenty minutes before nursery pick-up time, sobbing into my hands like a baby, unable to get in the car and drive the three minutes down the road to pick up my boys in the pouring rain. My lovely, safe, responsive Audi A4 S line sat right outside my flat. It was dark, windy and thrashing rain and I cried and cried and beat myself up mentally for even considering walking 15 minutes with the buggy out of fear of driving two blocks in a straight line down the road. I couldn’t believe it had come to this! And I knew that in a few short weeks I WAS going to drive to Ashford and be there for Jennie and Matilda Mae. I just didn’t know how. So I sobbed with my face in my hands for maybe twenty minutes, hating myself out-loud. I looked at this for a long time on my pinterest board:

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And then, at 5 minutes to 6pm, I got up, took out my keys and drove to nursery. My knees shook, my heart raced, I fucked up my parking. But I did it. I had got the most afraid I could be and I overrode it. And the next week I drove to Knightsbridge and picked my husband up from Heathrow (I shook a bit, but I didn’t cry 😉 ). And the week after I drove to Watford for work and drove my colleague to Cheltenham for a gig and home again. So I knew I could do it. But the night before the walk, my husband still asked me, “Are you sure you’re OK to do this?” And even I was surprised how confidently I answered, “YES”.

Because I’ve never been more committed to being somewhere I had promised to be, my phobia didn’t stand a chance! I planned my route on google maps. I zoomed in on street-view and obsessed over which lane to take when. I worried about my first toll-booth experience on the Dartford Bridge. But nothing was going to stop me getting in that car and getting me and my kids to The Rare Breeds Centre in Kent for the Mile in Memory of Matilda Mae Walk!

In the end I drove like crap. I went twice round a couple of roundabouts. I got lost once and had to stop and heard a lot of “re-calculating, re-calculating…” from the sat-nav stern-voice lady. But who cares, I made it! And it was so worth it! My next post recounts the day in full, read on….

Beautiful Matilda Mae

Welcome to my blog!

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I’m a blogger! I haven’t quite honed the design of my blog yet, got lots of playing with colours to do, but I’m here!

I’m Coco, wife of Remus Azoitei (Romanian concert violinist, violin professor at Royal Academy of Music, Renault 12 enthusiast and generally awesome husband and Daddy) – mummy of two small boys, Gabriel (3) and Lucian (1), violinist & teacher, entreprenuer, and acting student. I love my family more than the Earth, I love music, I’m passionate about bringing classical music to babies and normalising classical music in general. I love Italy, champagne, flowers, babies & children, all things lovely and I’ll be writing about all these things at some point no doubt… plus life, death and the universe.

There’s a sad but beautiful story behind my new blog. A month ago, the mum-blogger community on twitter (of which I was a part as a mumprenuer @classicalbabyco) was rocked by the sudden shock of baby loss. The beautiful 9 month old daughter of Jennie Henley (@Edspire) died suddenly in her cot one night from SIDS. We were all stunned by her loss and became more and more involved as she turned to twitter for company and support the night after Matilda Mae was found sleeping, pouring out her grief in searingly honest detail. A few of us stayed up long into the night that first 24 hours after, as she tweeted from a dark, quiet house with husband and twins sleeping. I remember holding myself awake until gone 2am, long after her twitter feed fell silent, unable to bear the thought of her tweeting something and finding herself alone. Over the following days and weeks something strange happened. A new #Matilda Mae community sprung-up on social media, rallying around a grieving mother in her darkest time, sending love, answering her cries with our own esoteric answers, responding to Jennie’s tweets and blog posts with comforting words, ideas for the funeral service, music, ways of remembering Tilda and over the month we all came to be in awe of this woman. Even in the darkest times she managed to make everything around her beautiful. The beauty of her memorials for her daughter, the things she wrote, her thoughts for others, her ideas for the twins to honour Matilda’s memory: everything sparkled around her. She really is the most beautiful person! And we all came to love her and think of her as a real friend.

I’ve spent so much time online this month, talking to her, writing to her and to other bloggers about her. I want to write more and need a place to do that. So here it is. So, I have Jennie to thank for this blog. She even came up with the name: Coco&Co! This blog will be my own place to make beautiful. (Just another small part of Matilda Mae Henley’s immense, ongoing legacy). I hope you like it…. xx