Full Company with Frank, Performance Team Rehearsal and Music Lab

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday June 19, 2010 – Full Company with Frank, Performance Team Rehearsal and Music Lab

Solstice Festival day in Fremont, which made parking a bit dicey. It is overcast and chilly, and we begin pretty early, so it wasn’t too bad going in. By the time we departed, just after noon, the joint was definitely jumping.

First part of the morning was the full team with guitars, with Frank. We are wrapping up a season of consistent work with him, and following of on a week of intensive work with Sandra. He summarized the process of observing the body as it responds to the breath, our presence at the “critical moment”, and took us through an intensive look at “inhibition” in the Alexander Technique sense of the word. He led us through a simple rhythmic exercise, slowly adding more bits to it and increasing the complexity. The final part of the exercise was as close to The Movements as anything I have encountered; both revealing and energizing.

After a break, the Performance Team reconvened for rehearsal. A bit more focused work on The Children’s Hour to begin with. Chris revealed that for next week some repertoire is returning to The Hat, and so we spent the rest of the rehearsal reviewing pieces we may not have played for some time: The Turkish Suite, Brasil, Twilight, 49 Notes, Ikada-Jima, The Wig Maker, Thrak, and Lament. We got of on a very silly tangent on one of the pieces, reworking its arrangement and including a radical change in genre. Lots of fun, and I believe it will be incorporated. It took quite a bit more time than anticipated, however, and so continued work on Taylor’s arrangement of Neptune and Ian’s Voodoo Situation were pushed back to Monday’s rehearsal.

Return to my place where Greg, Mary Beth, Ian and IgorK gathered for today’s Music Lab. We moved forward in the interval recognition ear training exercise, taking on sixths and sevenths. From there we moved on to recognizing the elements of a harmonic environment – in this case various modes – and building a scale that is consistent. Feels like the beginning of some essential stuff. The circulations that surrounded this exploration had a definite “something” about them.