Performance team rehearsal

A Tuning the Air Journal

Monday, September 12, 2011 – Performance team rehearsal

Eight of us in the house. Chris had to work, and asked me to drive the rehearsal for this evening.

Travis is finally back from 2 weeks abroad on family business, so tonight’s rehearsal was largely dedicated to getting him up to speed on the material we have been working on in his absence.

We began with “Connecticut Yankee”. We learned this in a (relative) hurry on Saturday, and wanted to make sure that all of the parts, bits and pieces were solidly in hand. We began with some section work. I took the team playing the bass part off to another room, and we reviewed the parts, while the others cranked through the twisty chromaticism of the melodies. We regathered and ran the various sections for clarity, and then the entire piece. Tempo was a question. We worked at an intentionally slow tempo for this work, but the target tempo was in question. I settled on a fairly relaxed tempo to adopt for the time being. Later review of the various recorded versions indicate that it is traditionally performed at a much brisker pace. The trick to pulling it off has to do with playing relaxed – there is a certain frantic quality to the composition, but frantic-ness as a quality of the playing is guaranteed to kill the fun of the piece. Nigel is nothing if not completely at ease in his delivery of even the most complex passages, and this is the quality to aspire to as we move forward on this.

We moved on to “Mad World”. Travis’ part in this is not difficult, and he had it well in hand. A new part for Bob and Jaxie took a little time to work out. This was developed over a few runthroughs, largely with the metronome.

After a short break, we moved on to “Space Circus”. This was largely review for Travis, as we had worked on it with him before his departure. Several times through with the metronome.

To “Larks’ Tongues”. Travis had put in the work on his part for this over the summer, but had not yet played it together with the group. After a couple of times through, it all came back to him. We focused on several sections, moving toward clarity of parts, consensus on dynamics and feel, and simply working out the difficult bits.

As time ran out, we took one last shot at “Connecticut Yankee”… not quite there yet, but all of the elements intact.

Another extracurricular group workout on Wednesday afternoon. Thursday rehearsals begin this week. This will be the first time this season, since our opening meeting, that the entire performance team has been in the room at the same time.

Project practicalities lie ahead… house team, we still need a sound person, and there is a significant public announcement coming shortly.