Spring Semester Begins

Since my last post pertaining to the jazz concert at Rock City Gardens many things have occurred among them: Christmas, New Years, and the beginning of Spring semester in college. During Christmas break I obtained a Wii and an iPhone 3G, so future posts will most likely include these two great devices which by now I have explored thoroughly.
Though the Wii does not have the same graphical power of the XBox 360 or Playstation 3, it makes up for this in its intuitive control of games via its motion sensing controller: the wii remote. The ease of using the controller also has an added benifit, people who would usually avoid video games, such as older people or those who lament the many buttons on most system controllers, find the wii great fun. I have seen this first-hand as my grandmother loves to bowl, and even play Mario Kart, though she would never play most XBox 360 games.
The iPhone 3G has been a great phone so far. I have never had a phone that provided such eas of navigation. The app store has hundreds of thousands of apps, many free, that enhance the phone ten fold in my opinion.
With both the iPhone and Wii I have been tempted to use homebrew and jailbreak each respectively, but have not. Though the added functionality would greatly expand the value of both devices to me, the risk is something I am unwilling to take.
In the field of music, I have now begun working on Artie Shaw's Clarinet Concerto. This piece is a great work, and I have wanteed to perform it since I was in High School. I have now reached a point where I am confident, that with enough practice I will be able to give this piece justice.
This semester I have continued my study of Japan, by taking a class dealing with Premodern Japan. I will be finishing up the duo of History of Music classes this semester, thankfully, but not before delving into many, many scores. To attempt to partially fill my gap in knowledge of the Latin American world, I am taking a class pertaining to the post-colonial era of these states. Another interesting class I am taking this semester is Musics of the World. In this class we learn of many different music cultures, and even get to play their instruments at times, in workshops.
The semester is getting off to a decent start.