Full Team Circle with Frank and Performance Team Rehearsal with Bill and Frank

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday January 22, 2011 – Full Team Circle with Frank and Performance Team Rehearsal with Bill and Frank

Another good turnout for the sitting. For me, not quite the solid experience I had last week, but there you go.

The full company Circle amounted to the performance team plus Bill today, with no one from the house team joining in.

For the first hour, we worked with Frank, without guitars. He put us through a couple of exercises designed to activate the attention. Some of it was silly, most of it was fun, and all of it struck the nail on the head in a very essential way. Observations from the team spoke to the real work of the Circle, and the repercussions permeated the work for the rest of the day.

Next, to work with Bill, who is directing us in exercises to sharpen our improvisations. For this hour we worked largely on variations on a basic ear training exercise involving circulating using specific intervals. I think this was not easy for anyone. The final circulation, which was free except when Bill called for a specific intervallic parameter, had a quality that was very much what we always aspire to. It had the quality of intention, and yet flowed and breathed freely. Very promising.

For the last hour we moved on to repertoire, we ran a number of pieces, making sure all parts were covered and doing a bit of detail work. A certain hint of the sharpness we demand in performance began to appear in the playing. A Day In The Life, Prayer of Gratitude, Twilight and Space Zombies! From Outer Space were all addressed in some detail. Chris put Invocation (Bill’s piece from the Seattle Guitar Circle CD, not the GC theme) on the table as something to get into the set this season.