Showing posts with label orchestra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label orchestra. Show all posts

Saturday, June 30, 2018

Our spring university life.


One-third of the summer is gone, and I was sure we just barely stepped into it. Trying to catch up on our blogging is a bit overwhelming, so in this post I will try to hit some highlights from our spring 2018 at NU campus (I decided to do a separate post on our spring as a family).

In March and April, we attended end of the year concerts for the NU Orchestra and NU Choir. Somehow, we got on their VIP lists, so we had very nice seats reserved for us. Yay! Both events are always very well-attended, and it is almost impossible to get the tickets. Both Orchestra and the Choir did an amazing job as always. Spencer and I were talking about how it would be great for them to do a tour in America, showing Kazakh culture. One of my favorite pieces from orchestra was the Believer (Imagine Dragons) played on national Kazakh instruments. The choir did songs from famous musicals which was a lot of fun!

Waiting for the show to start (NU Orchestra)

NU Orchestra (some of the national instruments they play are very cool)

They even had a base guitar! If you want to see some of their pieces, just search on YouTube for NU Orchestra) 

NU Choir had in my opinion their best performance in all of the years we've been here!

Spencer was nominated for Professor of the Year Award (in total only 5 professors from the entire university were nominated), so we went to that fancy Award Ceremony where the students, clubs, and one professor get an award for being awesome. I mean they even rolled out the red carpet, how fancy is that?! And even though Spencer didn’t win the award, the students cheered the loudest for him when his name was read! Another positive outcome of this event was that I got myself a new dress and new shoes! 😊
 
Who are these two handsome people?

At the ceremony we had a front row seats!


We also had our annual award ceremony for our basketball team. As always it was held at our house with a lunch, laughter, and some tears (tears from saying goodbye to our two graduating basketball players). We love our basketball family!

Some of our second year girls

Aigerym  and Ayim, our two graduates this year.


Our basketball family minus Nika who is taking this picture.

NU does a year book (kind of like in any US high school), but this is the first year Spencer decided to get one. Maybe it was because this year was the first year his students that he led from the very first year, graduated. I don’t know, I should ask. But we made it into this year book (besides his picture on the list of the faculty). I think students like him!








Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Spring Concerts


NU Orchestra Concert (April 2017)
For the past three years, the highlight of the spring season has been the end of year choir concert.  This year, we had an additional treat - the first ever concert by the NU orchestra.  The NU orchestra is a combination of folk instruments and traditional instruments and they play a combination of classic Kazakh music and songs from music and television.  Their biggest hit is playing the theme song form the BBC drama "Sherlock" and the theme song from game of thrones.


Traditional flutes


Traditional Kazakh song with guest singer from musical university.

The group formed from students sitting around in the evenings playing together and now they have an adviser who is a leading ethno-musicologist who helps them learn how to play some traditional instruments that have not been used for a long time (like a little oblong flute).


This year I have one of the girls on the basketball team who is also in the orchestra.  She plays the dombra, a two-stringed instrument (see it here).  She asked me if Yulia and I would like to come to the inaugeral concert.  Of course we couldn't turn down such an invitation, so we went.  We were lucky to be given VIP seats next to the university president and other "real VIPs" and to have a great seat in the new student theater that opened this spring in the student dormitory complex.


Game of Thrones Theme Song (Blindfolded)

The concert was fantastic.  They played very well, and the music itself was lively.  They had a few student hosts, one of whom is my student, and they were genuinely funny and very charming.
Orchestra playing blindfolded to demonstrate proficiency
The highlight of the concert was a traditional battle of dombras when four of the boys spent about 8 minutes doing various things to show that they were the best players.  It was very cool.

Sherlock Theme


Traditional Kazakh Song


We also attended the spring choir concert (the next day) and our whole family was given the VIP treatment.  The girls' participation with the choir has made us a VIP family with the choir.  The concert this year was one of their best.  They had good group numbers and fun individual numbers.  The students went a bit overboard with the dramatic story that they tried to tell to put the whole concert together, but it was a lot of fun. Leaving the concerts we had the feeling that when we do decide to leave NU and Kazakhstan, it will be a very hard day.  For as many small (and sometimes large) frustrations that crop up, we genuinely love the students and the interactions that we have with them.  They are great kids.

NU Choir
NU choir voted Nika to receive their Best Soloist of the Year Award for her performance in their Winter Concert