Wanted so Bad...

I can taste it! Well, after you practice and play on your horn for hours everyday, it IS rather difficult to get the taste of reed, plastic, metal, and the city's water out of your mouth. I am going to be doing a half recital this semester, and under normal circumstances you spend a full year preparing for any sort of recital, mostly because you are required to do a masterpiece of great difficulty and establish a program that will last 30min for a half recital, or 60min for a full one. I am doing one of the cornerstone masterpieces in the professional saxophone repetoire this semester, and I'm bringing it all together in a month. That is 1/9th the normal time that this piece usually demands, but dammit, I want to put on a junior (half) recital!

I am not going to lie, this semester has seen the fewest amount of credited hours I have ever taken at this university with 14. Yet due to my own damnable determination, I have convinced myself that I should and need to put on a recital. I suppose this feeling has been building up since this is my fifth year in the music department (second as a major) there are some "underclassmen" that have already given their senior recitals over me. This is not to say they are any better of musicians then me, but it does make me feel inferior, which I am not too much a fan of. Not to mention, I have seen some great talent pass through this school on the sax, and it is those individuals I am trying to catch up to, and if at all possible in this life, pass. So, the fact that I have the drive and the chuzpha to try for a recital only months before it needs to be finalized, means that I want to be one of those "legacy" musicians.
What I mean is, I want freshmen to remember me as being good and someone they want to play up to.
Not to mention, there are pieces that I have seen my fellow sax players perform, that year after year I am amazed that they were able to do it. Even the ones that I would place as being more mediocre, they were able to play their pieces and do it well. There is no piece that is more notable to me, and any more of an earmark of an undergraduates admission to the quasi-professional status than Alexander Glazunov's Concerto for Saxophone.
Every saxophone that I have seen come before me has played this piece, and to me, it is a monumental overtaking, one in which I want to tackle. Does this make me as good as those other horn players? Sadly, not even close. But it does meet one of my goals I was bound and determined to meet once I came to college.

That's one major part of my excitement for this half recital. Another- that means I am nearing the end of my tenure at my undergrad. That has so much lifting power, it's sickening. Just thinking that at the end of next May, provided everything goes according to plan, I'm going to have a college diploma and be working on my masters degree. It scares me to think that the safety net of college is so quickly coming to a close, but, I am excited for the new adventure.

And really, I think I am more excited to get the hell out of Pocatello and into a real town. I have my sights set on a goal, and come hell or high water, I am going to reach them.