Performance Team Rehearsal at the Wilsons

A Tuning the Air Journal

Monday March 1, 2010 – Performance Team Rehearsal at the Wilsons

Full team once again in the house for this rehearsal, for the last time until after the course in Italy.

I had one purely practical task in mind for the evening, which I brought up first. With Mary Beth in the team, and Igor not, the balance of parts for Eye of the Needle has not been quite right. Having spent a good part of the weekend immersed in the history of the piece, plus it is a rather significant piece for this project, historically as well, I was feeling particularly sensitive to the care we put into it, I suppose. Without Igor, we were short in the bass department, and the part Mary Beth has been playing of late with the House Circle is somewhat redundant in this configuration. Jaxie volunteered to switch to bass. In terms of balance, that left the standard melody part open for Mary Beth. Travis, Bob and I went to another room with Jaxie to reacquaint her with the bass part; not entirely new news, but she has not played it in a performance team in a long time, if ever. Meanwhile, the lead players worked together to make sure that Mary Beth was clear on the new part. A couple of run-throughs and we were on track.

The next suggestion was for Thrak. A little bit of research to determine which part is left short with Igor’s absence, and over to Mary Beth to take that and run. For this one we took a look at various sections, playing quietly with the metronome in order to find the groove. Playing quietly on this piece is one of the more powerful strategies we have discovered. It takes away a lot of the physical crutches/quirks players have developed over time in order to play the piece in time. It is an Alexander Principle put into glorious practice: paraphrasing Frank, “how we deal with the problem IS the problem.” When we let go of violent foot tapping and body rocking and audible counting and extra “clicks” from the right hand on dampened strings to fill in the missing beats, there is nothing left but the polyrhythm which turns out to be totally simple and clear.

A break, after which Taylor suggested some circulating. F Harmonic Minor was called. Jaxie then asked about the assorted circulation games and exercises we have been working with, wondering if any of them could be seen as having performance potential. We latched onto the bidirectional exercise we have been looking at for the past couple of weeks, and spent the rest of the rehearsal time digging into it. No decision about whether it is something that can be incorporated into performance, but a lot of information generated.

Moving associatively, the bi-directional Bach Two-Part Invention special project has resurfaced and, with a few scheduling difficulties to be overcome, looks like it may have legs.