Extra-curricular interests and other activites:

I am fortunate enough to live in a school district with bountiful resources and tons of kids. There are numerous clubs and activities which I can choose to partake in. Thus for someone like me, who does a lot of things, these organizations are perfect. One activity that I do is play the violin. Not only do I play within the school orchestra, as a class, but I also have formed a string quartet and take private lessons outside of school. On of the most exciting (and also fun) musical activities which I am part of is the string quartet. The quartet consists of two violins, a viola, and a cello. In the school year of 2005-2006 I found a great piece of music which I really wanted to play. The piece was Shostakovitch's String Quartet No. 8. The piece is fairly difficult and requires experienced players. I scoured the school for fellow orchestra members who might be interested. From there our small group of virtuosoes was formed. I managed to convince a violinist who was a Senior, a cello who was a Junior, and a violist who was a Freshman to join this quartet. Since I was a Sophomore that year we had a member from every grade in High School. At first the quartet was just about playing the piece of music that I had found, but after we learned that we decided to keep going and learn a new piece. That was last year, now this year in 2007 our other violinist has graduated and we have found another freshman to replace him (continuing on with the diverse grade theme). The music we prepare has allowed us to have some very unique opportunities to perform. We have been asked to play in a humanities class in front of over a hundred students to demonstrate the oppressive and anti-communist style of music so typical of contemporary Russian music in the Shostakovitch. In addition we have participated in numerous master classes, one of which was with the quirky energetic group Time for Four. In this class we got to perform in front of an audience and then have Time for Four give us an instructive session regarding the piece we had just played. Although we were very nervous going out there, Time for Four was very supportive. They ended up giving us very through and detailed critiques on how we could improve as an ensemble. We later took their advice and won the ranking of one (the best) at our local state Solo and Ensemble festival.