Alicia kim's blog

For the Muse

I opened my eyes and stared at the door to open up. My heart was strangily not beating even though I was a bit nervous in my mind. I was just one girl standing in the middle of people and teenagers holding their instrument, waiting nervously for the concert to start. I stood there silently with my violin on one hand and my bow on the other.

A dude came out of the monitoring room and finally opened the door. We went in hecticly into our first half of the concert. I thought as I sat down in my seat to not let me make mistakes, especially the bowing. We waited until the video of introduction of our piece finished. The conductor and the pianist came out together.

After waiting for what felt like hours, we started our concert. I was nervous that my fingers and bow would be mixed up. We went through the movements in flow and the first movement had already ended in a snap. We stood up all together and bowed to signal the end of the first half, but the pianist had prepared an anchor. After he finished his beautiful anchor, we went back to the backstage for the second half.

I calmed myself and tuned my violin in the backstage, waiting for the intermission to be over. Now, all of the member gathered right in front of the door and waited until the door opened. It was more hectic now that there were about hundred people on stage. We also waited for the video to finish introducing the piece that we were going to play. I realized that the two pieces we were going to play that day were connected by the relationship between the composers. Brahms and Schumann shared the same muse that inspired them to create these amazing pieces. After finally understanding the connection, we started my last piece in this orchestra. We went swiftly through the four movements in the piece and it finally ended. it felt surreal that this was the last time I’ll be up on this stage with these people.

The conductor signaled us to stand up and bow to the audience. I looked at the audience and spotted my parents. I couldn’t help but have a bit of sickness in my stomach. I couldn’t identify this feeling of sadness but gladness. We did our concert routine of standing up and bowing and playing the anchor. We stood up one last time and bowed towards the audience. We all together turned our backs and disappeared into the backstage.

After I walked away from the stage and to the girl’s dressing room to pack my instrument and my belongings, I had a lingering attachment in my heart about even the backstage of this concert hall. I’ve had done about five concerts that I made so many memories here. For the last time, I looked at the room behind me and took the only thing I can have for a long time: evidence of one of my memories.