I am still in a lot of pain from yesterday, especially my calves and feet. It helped that we spent most of the day seated during masterclasses.
We got a late start this morning after our long trek yesterday, first rehearsing with the soloists we will be performing with this week. Following this was the opening of the conference and a mass music reading by all of the participants.
One masterclass we sat in was with trombonist Ben Pelletier. He is a professional freelance musician and contractor. Being a contractor in a musical field is not much different than a contractor in the construction field. He gathers people to complete and contract with a client, for weddings to private concerts. He also performs with various pop groups around China, specializing in Canto-pop.
After his masterclass, we played one of our pieces with the leader of the next masterclass as the soloist. Completing that, we left the auditorium and had a more private, personal conversation with Mr. Pelletier. He expressed how much the music world has changed since he came up as a student and a new professional. He spoke to us discussing how willing we have to be to take chances at the beginning of our careers in an attempt to make mistakes and figure out our personal boundaries for what we will want to do in our career as a whole.
After this we left to get dinner. Our first attempt at a place had an average meal price of HK $ 600. We made a hasty retreat with many apologies to the confused wait staff. The second place was a nice Italian restaurant called "The Spaghetti House . "Below is a picture of my meal-Parma Ham and Chicken Spaghetti.
We returned to the APA for another music reading, this time with the facility open to the public to come with their trombone's and read with us. This was a great experience, at least fifty people there.
