Rehearsal, with one week to go

A Tuning the Air Journal

Thursday September 17, 2009 – Rehearsal, with one week to go

Along 65th Street between my apartment and the Wilson’s house, there are very few coffee shops, and none open at 7:30 in the evening. There are no Starbucks. Not one, which is very strange since the damned things are almost everywhere, and occasionally two per block. I have been doing this drive on a regular basis since about 1999, and this fact had never quite registered for me. Tonight, however, I was very aware of it. Having begun with lessons shortly after the morning sitting, and done a rather intensive 3-hour rehearsal with the blues band in the late afternoon, I really needed a cup of coffee before the evening rehearsal. Ended up making a bit of a detour to satisfy this need.

Chris out tonight due to work. We began with 7 in the circle, as a miscommunication had Taylor arriving 30 minutes late. We began with a bit of pretty astonishing news I had learned earlier in the day, and then moved on to the Performance Team’s division of attention exercise.

Once fully assembled, we played a couple of pieces to get ourselves up and running, and then jumped into the serious work of getting the clockwise and bidirectional circulations from “Scorched Air” up and running. This was rather labor intensive. After more than an hour, it was solid at tempo, with the rhythm section in lockstep. When it is tight, it kills. Right now, though, every time we begin work on it, it has the feel of being remembered, rather than being played. Not sure we will cross that threshold before opening night, and I am not inclined to push the matter. But soon, I am confident. Next Thursday will be plenty exciting without it.

Short break. The rest of the evening running through the available repertoire at tempo with the metronome. Paused to tighten up a couple of transitions, but for the most part things are sounding and feeling very good. I have an internal short list of pieces that will be strong and ready for next Thursday. My next task is to formalize that and put together a working setlist for the Saturday rehearsal, so that it can be run and any necessary revisions worked out. By Monday, all things being equal, I would like to be able to run the set that we will play and focus on the flow of the evening in its entirety.