Rehearsal at the Wilsons

A Tuning the Air Journal

Monday June 21, 2010 – Rehearsal at the Wilsons

All present and accounted for tonight. We began by working on Taylor’s arrangeent of the first minute and a half of “Neptune”, from The Planets. This began to really take shape tonight, as we got a bit past the notes and began to address the music. A general kind of “proof of concept” that gives us the clarity that it is possible, and will work. And so the arranger has his work cut out for him; 90 seconds down and about another 5 minutes to go. We’ll play it amplified at sound check on Thursday, for additional information, but it is unlikely to be ready before the season closes.

Found this online about the piece earlier in the day and circulated it to the team:

“Neptune” was the first piece of orchestral music to have a fade-out ending. Holst stipulates that the women's choruses are “to be placed in an adjoining room, the door of which is to be left open until the last bar of the piece, when it is to be slowly and silently closed”, and that the final bar (scored for choruses alone) is “to be repeated until the sound is lost in the distance”. Although commonplace today, the effect bewitched audiences in the era before widespread recorded sound—after the initial 1918 run-through, Holst's daughter Imogen (in addition to watching the charwomen dancing in the aisles during “Jupiter”) remarked that the ending was “unforgettable, with its hidden chorus of women's voices growing fainter and fainter... until the imagination knew no difference between sound and silence”.

We moved on to some detail and refinement work on The Children’s Hour, focusing on phrasing as a group.

Next on the agenda was Ian’s Voodoo Situation, a loosely structured improvisation following along the harmonic lines of George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept, using chords from Miles Runs the Voodoo Down as the jumping off point. Good fun. A stretch for us, but stretching is good. We’ll also give this a go at soundcheck, and that will determine whether or not it will go in The Hat for this show.

A run through of A Day In The Life.

Lastly, a review of a new spin on Ikada-Jima that we stumbled into on Saturday. Since Howard was not at rehearsal on Saturday, and had no idea about the changes, we got to experience his unfiltered reaction, which was an ear-to-ear grin. Very good sign. It is on!

One more time through The Children’s Hour and we called it a night.