Euphonic Studio ™

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Emily Thompson, Miss Northeast Iowa

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Emily came to me in an interesting situation.  She was in competition for Miss Iowa which put her on a path to Miss America, the real deal one, not the Donald Trump-Carrie Prejean-underwear-scandal-ridden Miss USA.  Having not paid a whole lot of attention to these types of events for a while, the only news I had to go by was the infamous Carrie Prejean airhead “opposite marriage” remark.

Emily Thompson, Miss Northeast Iowa

Emily Thompson, Miss Northeast Iowa

So with that backdrop in my mind, in comes Emily.  Guess what? She’s a Purdue University grad in Electrical Engineering working at Rockwell.  She had played violin from an early age, starting with the Suzuki method, and is a very competent violinist.  She was planning to use violin playing as her talent (she’s much better than Sarah Palin playing the flute) and wanted me to help her pick a piece and arrange it to fit the 90 second limit.  90 seconds goes by pretty fast if you think about it.

The first pick I came up with was a movement from a Handel violin sonata without repeats.  Played at an appropriate tempo, it just barely fit into the 90 second limit.  So, Emily took that piece and went to work on it, using my backing tracks as a practice supplement.  Eventually, she took the piece to the Miss Northeast Iowa competition and won!  I was very happy for her, realizing of course that talent is only one part of the competition.

After Emily won Miss NE Iowa, her life went crazy with pageant-related events.  Candidates are expected to make appearances on an ongoing basis, so it was hard for her to decide what she could do for violin.  I suggested Orange Blossom Special, but she said that she said that last year’s winner was a violinist and she was pretty sure that Miss Iowa played OBS for her piece.  Emily wanted to do something different, so she talked me into/twisted my arm/charmed me into doing the backing tracks for 90 seconds of Chris Brown’s Forever, which she planned on giving the Josh Vietti treatment.

So here it is.  Unfortunately I don’t have a recording of Emily playing the Handel but maybe sometime I can coax her into stopping by… maybe even shoot a video!  That would be awesome!

Forever (in 90 seconds)

 

Written by Bill Niemi

June 29th, 2011 at 4:08 pm

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