Saturday Rehearsal

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday, August 27, 2011 – Saturday Rehearsal

Performance team rehearsal at Curt’s place from 9:30 to 12:30 this morning. Chris, Curt, Carl, Mary Beth, Taylor, Greg and Travis on board; Bob and Jaxie out of town this weekend.

Following up on the Wednesday extracurricular rehearsal, we began with “Space Circle Part I”. We got Travis and Taylor, who were not available on Wednesday, up to speed on parts, and got the arrangement up on its feet. Thirty minutes or so and it was sounding presentable. It needs to be played at a reliable 110 bpm, with the hocketed “left hand” parts both flowing and blending. Chris and Curt, on melody, began to hone the phrasing. Bob will join us on this part, and Jax will join the left hand, and so we should have everyone up to speed by Monday’s rehearsal.

Next to “Larks’ Tongues”. This was a bit more work. Much improved from Wednesday, but there is more to do. A number of the players are still relying on the sheet music for this one, and the Music Director made it unambiguously clear that in order to get an entire set of new material up, running and presentable by opening night, we need to arrive at every rehearsal with a command of our individual parts, so that we can focus our limited time together on group work rather than personal practice. By the end of the rehearsal, the piece was playable in its entirety – not great art, but with practical competence.

After a break, we began with a quick discussion about “Chant from a Holy Book”, with Curt observing that on a practical level it is probably something for a duo (a trio with Darlene on oboe when she is available) rather than a full group piece. We then moved on to three smaller pieces. A Curt presented the basics of “Mad World”; primarily so that the group could hear it, get a picture of how it might be arranged, and make a decision about whether to pursue it or drop it. The Music Director said “pursue it.” Next, we jumped in on “Slow Burn”, just to see what we had retained. Although it is technically a piece we have performed before, it appeared late last season and was only performed twice, so (along with “Hanging Gardens…”) it has been deemed “new material”. Some discussion of how to approach the cascades in the middle section. The Sgt Bones team (Greg, Mary Beth and Carl) then presented “Gnossienne” by Eric Satie. We all learned the melody, with some discussion about phrasing and articulation. Curt, Carl and Travis gravitated to the chord accompaniment, and after a few runthroughs, a working arrangement emerged.

We closed with one more runthrough of both “Space Circus” and “Larks’ Tongues”, both of which held together remarkably well.

The Music Director will not be at rehearsal on Monday, so Curt will sub for that role. We will spend as much time as necessary getting Bob and Jaxie up to speed on the material we have been working on this week, and if time permits we will then begin to look at what the next batch of material to be addressed might be.