Rehearsal at the Wilsons

A Tuning the Air Journal

Monday October 12, 2009 – Rehearsal at the Wilsons

All nine of the performance team were present for this rehearsal. A night of fairly heavy labor. Or, perhaps just a little labored. Energy seemed low, generally. Could simply be seasonal; the sun is rising about 7:30 in the morning and setting about 6:30 in the evening, the weather is chilly and wet, and all in all there is a strong pull toward hibernation. But life goes on and we have schedules to follow.

We began by reviewing the re-orchestrated Zeppelin circulation, getting Bob up to speed on what we worked out on Saturday. Even though this circulation is not strictly metronomic, we put in some time with the metronome in order to hone the sense of flow.

That done, we moved on to “Scorched Air”. Although this was in the set last season, it is not (yet) to the point where we can drop it and pick it back up easily. After a break it requires a fair amount of detailed rehearsal work to get back into performance trim, and even when it is up and running it needs to be played at every rehearsal. The bi-directional circulation is especially tricky, but that is only the tip of the scorched iceberg. The work together in rehearsal highlighted the amount of personal work we need if we are to reanimate this beast.

For the final part of the rehearsal, we moved on to “La Rueda”. Like “Scorched Air”, it is all about the circulations, and very difficult to work on except when we are all present. This one is still very new, so the first part of any rehearsal inevitably focuses on simply remembering parts. The circulating, itself, is not too terribly difficult, and well within our comfort zone as a group. We just don’t really “know” the piece yet, and so a good portion of the rehearsal was focused on details of parts and accuracy. Tony and Christina popped in on their way home from the House Circle meeting, and sat in on the tail end of this rehearsal. Christina moved inside the circle and we were able to do a couple of runs through before we called it a night.