Soreness & Salonpas, Herbie Hancock, and a new numbers obsession

I’m coming to you this week with incredibly sore shoulder and upper back muscles, because practicing this week got really big. In preparation for the concerto premiere in June (yipes!) I’ve started letting loose and working on the full-bodied sound you need to produce to be heard over a full orchestra, which translates to me really pushing into the piano. At one point this week I just went for it and banged out a rapid octave arpeggio passage so loudly that my ears were ringing by the time I finished.

In terms of solo repertoire I’m also working on some Liszt and Prokofiev works that are basically very noisy arm workouts, so my muscles and probably my neighbors really hate me right now. I’m writing this with multiple Salonpas patches stuck to my upper back like a bruised prizefighter, the menthol smell so strong that I feel like I’ve just speedrun myself into my inevitable future as a little old minty-smelling Asian granny.

Basically I feel like I’ve been doing this: