Rehearsal at My Place

A Tuning the Air Journal

Monday September 28, 2009 – Rehearsal at My Place

Yom Kippur, so we were Wilson-less and rehearsing at my place.

For the first hour, worked primarily with circulating in C Major, in time at brisk tempos. We were seven in the circle, and worked entirely in eighth note triplets and eighth notes, and it was a bit of a challenge. This is surprisingly difficult, even after all of these years.

We did several run-throughs of “Cultivating the Beat”, beginning at a modest tempo and working up to performance tempo. Very useful, and something Ian has probably not had a lot of opportunity to do with the group, since he is plugging into a piece of repertoire we were already up and running on. Also good for Travis, I suspect, since though he has played the piece for a long time he is just getting up and running on a new part.

Most of the repertoire-oriented work in the last hour was on pieces not currently in the setlist: “Onyx”, “Where Is The Nurse?” and even “Not My Sharona”. “Bicycling to Afghanistan” even made an appearance; a tragically limping appearance, but an appearance nonetheless. With Chris sitting to my right, I suddenly remembered sitting in this very room 10 years ago with the Spevvy’s, a trio that Chris was a part of, teaching the intro to them and telling them I would not take it further until they could count it.

A little “Brasil” review and we called it a night.