Inaugural Circle, Meeting and Rehearsal for Season Eight

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday August 15, 2009 – Inaugural Circle, Meeting and Rehearsal for Season Eight

Sitting at my place at 8:30am. Well attended. Saturday sittings only 30 minutes this season. This allows us to begin a little later, and then begin rehearsal a little earlier. Hoping this will mean more people at the sitting, which strikes me as crucial for the next phase of Tuning the Air.

To Fremont Abbey Arts Center for a 9:30 beginning. Everyone in attendance. Began with a circle for everyone who plays guitar, performance and support teams together. Meleah observing. A simple improvisation. In current Guitar Craft parlance, “when ready, begin,” except that no one needed to utter the words. We sat in silence until moved to play. The Great Hall at Fremont Abbey is very conducive to this kind of play. Some circulating. A short all-in circle, but important to begin together with Music. When all is said and done, that is all it is about, after all.

Guitar down, and a short meeting. Focused on the immediate tasks: 1) getting the music up and running, 2) promotion, and 3) staging. There is a great deal to do, and no room to hide from any of it. Simply articulating the challenge is the first step. Then we address the various needs.

From there on to the first full rehearsal for the Performance Team. Learning to play in this space is the primary challenge. Very different in sound from the downstairs café space, and it will require a period of adjustment, and no doubt some pretty serious changes. I proposed a new seating arrangement, which we adopted. It will necessitate some re-tooling of several composed circulations. But we are pretty adaptable in that respect and I don’t anticipate much in the way of difficulty. For this first rehearsal we did not try to address much in the way of nuts and bolts. Instead we simply played through our entire repertoire. I made a number of mental notes, but primarily the aim was just to play together for the shear joy of playing together. The work will come, but not today.