Performance Team Rehearsal, Music Lab, Lament and Folklife

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday May 29, 2010 – Performance Team Rehearsal, Music Lab, Lament and Folklife

Fremont Abbey again booked today, so we worked in my apartment.

The performance team, all present and accounted for, spent the first half of rehearsal with The Children’s Hour. It is a tricky little piece, but kind of in and inverse way. The timing of the various parts is extremely complex, and the only way for us to get a grasp of it is to break it down. But, while necessary and inevitable, breaking it down actually makes it more difficult. Then there is a moment when the Music of way the parts collaborate suddenly becomes apparent, and suddenly it is very easy to play. At this point we are still in a place where it takes us some work to get to that point – and of course performing it requires that we be at that point from the first note, without preparation. Monday’s rehearsal will be the test of whether or not the progress made today is assimilated.

Ian worked with us on a circulation/improv vision he has based on a couple of scale/tonalities that he has been studying this year. The resulting Voodoo Improv was very cool. Not sure if it is in the Hat for Thursday.

Continued work on A Day In The Life, with incremental refinements. Metronome work with Space Zombies! From Outer Space! and Eye of the Needle.

For the Music Lab, we continued the ear training work, going back to review seconds, thirds, fourths and fifths. Afterward, several of the team stayed behind for 30 minutes to look at fingering and timing details in Lament.

Later this evening, Lost Pedro playing at Northwest Folklife, evidently with a guest artist sitting in on chromatic harmonica for one piece.