Evening Rehearsal at the Wilsons

A Tuning the Air Journal

Monday January 18, 2010 – Evening Rehearsal at the Wilsons

Our first weekday meeting of the season. There was some confusion early in the day about whether this would be a rehearsal for strictly the performance team or continued work for the guitar-playing members of the company at large. A poll in the form of a flurry of email quickly determined that working with the full group was the consensus.

We were 11 in the circle in Bob and Jaxie’s living room, which is no mean feat. I had imagined that at some point we would break up into smaller groups in separate rooms, but in the end we stuck it out together.

We began with a lovely zither circulation. Then, most of the evening was dedicated to continuing the work with Bill on the exercise we began on Saturday. First, the basic exercise of moving from “any note of your choice” to unison, pausing from time to time to share observations about how we perceive what is happening, and our strategies for tracking what is being played in the circle. From here we moved on to working with a limited number of available notes, beginning with 3, D-E-F on the second string at frets 10-12-13, and eventually expanding this to 7 notes, a full D Minor scale from C at the 8th fret of the second string up to Bb at the 15th on the first string. An exercise in canon was introduced that rather stumped us, and we reverted to the original 3 notes in an attempt to simplify. About the time the meeting had moved into more discussion about the mechanics of the exercise and less actual guitar playing, a cell phone went off and this was taken as a sign that a break was in order.

Miles Davis made an appearance during the break, in the form of an impromptu small group experiment, driven by Ian, with the “groove” from It’s About That Time. After the break, Chris presented a small segment of an arrangement he has been working on as a possibility for performance in the show. Parts were quickly demonstrated and disbursed. The sense in the room was that this is a piece worth pursuing further.

A bit of free circulation.

Before departing, we broke to speak a bit about the schedule. Rehearsals for the next two weeks will be on Saturday and Monday, and will continue to be full-company circles. We spoke at some length about the pivotal moment we seem to be at as a team, and it was noted that after 5 (or 10, or 25, depending on your point of view) years, we are finally at a point where what Frank is presenting is able to sink in, in a very real way. Frank, Bob and Bill with again be leading the work on Saturday morning. Beyond that, we will see. I mentioned the need to put together a practical work day to build 3 more risers. Chris also mentioned that the search for interns needs to begin, and suggested that the team who volunteered to follow up on that get together in a week, after he returns from vacation.