Performance Team Rehearsal at the Wilsons

A Tuning the Air Journal

Thursday February 18, 2010 – Performance Team Rehearsal at the Wilsons

Down two tonight, with Chris still in Utah and Howard stuck on a deadline for work. So we were 7 in the circle.

An opening free circulation. Magic. I’m tempted to append “as always” to that assessment, because our circulations so far this year seem to have kicked up a notch. Jaxie had an idea for a moving geometric circulation scheme; fairly simple in principle, but not so easy in practice. Moving from “notes of your choice” to notes from a particular scale helped to give the pattern more clarity. Moving from there to assigned notes – seven of us in the circle, and seven notes in the C Lydian Dominant scale – helped a little more. Moving, with some experimentation, to an arpeggiated version of the scale brought yet more form. Not sure if this exercise has legs on a practical or performance level, but it was sobering.

After a break, we returned to a little more repertoire. Travis and Jaxie went to another room to look at parts for The Bus Artist, while I prevailed on the rest to run bits of Sigh and a Kiss so that I could work through the part that I had learned earlier in the day. My experience is that playing a new part for the first time in context is very disorienting, since what seems like the flow and shape of the part changes in relation to the other parts. So, getting this over as soon as possible helps me – now when I practice the piece, I will be able to hear it in its true relationship to the other parts. This also gave Mary Beth the opportunity to play the part she has also just recently learned into the form. Once I had confirmed some note detail and phrasing issues with the composer, we ran the entire piece several times. We also ran The Wig Maker, getting Mary Beth up and running on the chords for the middle section.

For the last 15 minutes, we worked with a strategy for structured improv that proved to be a bit of fun, with definite potential.

Saturday will be the full team at Fremont Abbey.