MUSIC AND MEMORY

 Hi everybody! As you know if you read my last post, music had, has, and for sure will be always an important role in my life. I started studying music when I was 7 years old but of course I heard music earlier. I remember good memories with my dad in the car listening to the radio, I even remember some of the songs that the advertisements would use. I can even identify the cartoons I was watching ass a kid by their music. Only because of this that I talked about, for me music is such a powerful tool that can store information of your life. You know how computers have hard drives to store all the information in case you need it or you forget about something, music is the same, you can forget about things but when you hear a song that is relatedd to that thing, you remember immediately, so in a way a person can use music as his hard drive to store memories, and this is what my post is about.

1. To give context to my first choice, this was about 8 years ago. As some of you know, I play the bassoon, not a very common instrument. I remember I just entered the orchestra of my town, which is a very common thing in my town for the people that study music and play an instrument at the age of 12. We had this big concert where I only remember one piece, symphony No. 4 in F minor by Tchaikovsky, such a good piece, and a little hard for little Manuel. I only remember the bassoon solo at the very end of the second movement. I hadd the opportunity to play 2nd bassoon right next to a wonderful bassoonist, at that time she got selected to study in the best conservatory of music of Spain located in Madrid, I think know she is traveling around the world doing what she likes, playing the bassoon. Every time I hear this symphony I can just remember of the solo I am talking about, she played it so good that I realized I wanted to keep playing the bassoon just to have an opportunity to play that solo. Of  course now I have other aspirations and purposes but that solo at that time hit me so hard that I spent the next month just playing that solo, I even played it for my family. The solo in this video occurs at 7:48, buut I recommend listening to the whole piece, it is actually worth it.

2.  For this next piece, the memory is been in my head since I was around 14. My family and I went to Vienna, Austria, and yes we went to see a concert of the vienna philharmonic. The music was amazing, and it was located just outside of a big palace with beautiful gardens that made it even better. It was outside, no ceiling covering us and it started raining really hard. They started playing Rhapsody in Blue and I remember they rained suddenly stopped. Every time I play that music I just remember how much fun I had with my family at that concert. The video you are abpout to see is actually the concert I am talking about, so you can see who conducted and who played th epiano, which I think some of you will recognize, and also you can see how beautiful that place is.

3. For this last choice, I am going to mention the song Free From Desire by Gala. This song I think every athlete at converse will recognize, it is like our victory song. Every time some team wins a game they play it later at some point. I play tennis here at converse, and last year we had a really good year, we could qualify to our conference tournament as the No. 2 seed, we were ranked 45 in the nation and we made a really good community in our team. This song reminds me of those victories that my team had last year, I am always happy when I hear that song. Also another thing that I might tell you, in the main part of the song, when it says free from the desire, we change it for "converse on fire" so it makes it more unique for us.

And this is all for you my readers, I hope you enjoy it and see you next time!