Life and Letters

Every year when the Summer Festival comes round in the University, I get rather nostalgic. In my first year in Uni, we had some brilliant soloists leaving the Uni after doing wonderful concertos for the summer fest and the same goes for my second undergrad year. I felt so timid next to these 'big grown ups and talented musicians' and it was always a little sad to the 'seniors' move on to their next step in life.

In my third year, by the time we played the last note in Tchai's 4th Symphony, some of us knew that it would be our last proper uni concert together and we got extremely nostalgic. The feeling of not wanting to leave got even more apparent when we went on tour and played Elgar's Enigma Variations. I remember one of us actually cried in 'Nimrod' when we played it in our last concert of the tour.

Last year, it was a culmination of both having the wonderful Dvorak 9th Symphony and being part of the committee that made me definitely feel truly a part of the festival. Nothing was sweeter than finally ending the festival with the raffle that was put together in a week and seeing the committee's hard work culminate in an extremely successful festival.

Tonight, we had our Summer Festival Symphony Orchestra concert and it was brilliant. No doubt there were mistakes here and there, and it wasn't note perfect - but the spirit of the UMS was there - musicians coming together and aiming to have music-making as fun as possible. The atmosphere was lovely and seeing students cheer each other on just made me smile. It was during the slow movement of the Borodin that I realised that the graduating batch comprised of some students that I auditioned in my third year (they were only in their 1st year!). It's well and truly scary. But i've seen how some of them have matured into fine musicians and it really makes me happy to know that I'm surrounded by talent, passionate and enthusiastic young musicians.

Yes, I feel old and its been nearly 5 full years since I stepped foot into Birmingham Uni, but it never stops me from believing that the music department truly carves out all-rounded students - not only students who are musical or have the musical knowledge to make a career out of music, but also those who have the mentality to succeed and possess the right attitude to life.

Perhaps the words of a very 'wise' first year - talented musicians move on in life - may well be true. But I think once you've been part of the UMS, it's hard to escape from the fact and the memories that you were part of a wonderful group of musicians :)

Thank you all for yet another brilliant concert- i truly enjoyed myself tonight :)