Performance team rehearsal

A Tuning the Air Journal

Thursday, September 22, 2011 – Performance team rehearsal

The inevitable night of crushing and inconsolable despair, when the knowledge of just how close we are to opening night crashes head-on into the awareness of just how far from ready we are. There is no avoiding it. In every rehearsal period of every season, this rehearsal is going to happen, and there is no way to stop it. And yet, knowing that is somehow no consolation.

We began with the next 12 bars of the Bach Prelude. It wasn’t pretty – okay, the music isn’t just pretty, it’s gorgeous; our competence at playing it, however, was another story. The absence of one player (Mary Beth is out of town) doesn’t help when working on a composed circulation, but we have done it before – in some ways it can be quite educational, although that is generally more effective when we are already a little competent with the piece. We did what we could, and then looked at what our strategy for the next week will be to get this up to standards. Our work is clearly cut out for us.

Next was work on “Slow Burn”; specifically the cascade section. The hiccup of the missing player again a difficulty, but progress made. We ran the entire piece for the first time. Much work to do.

From there we moved through the entire current repertoire list, not dwelling on any one piece for very long, but simply identifying issues to be addressed.

A rhythm section and melody rendition of “Walrus”. Interpreting vocal inflections for the guitar was discussed; when to be literal vs finding our own phrasing? The big challenge moving forward is the arrangement of the cello and horn parts. Chris will begin presenting this on Saturday – it is a big challenge.

“Larks” runthrough. This is substantially there. Some discussion of the pros and cons of various potential edits looked at, but the current sense is that it goes in its current form. I had transcribed some specific bass passages for the end section, to pump up the build a little, but did not execute them very well, and there was no time for extra rehearsal and so we moved on.

A quick review of some of the small group work. Began with what, for me, was the highlight of the night and the best cause for optimism – the Wilson Trio presentation of “Tico Tico”. Just a splendid little romp, humorous but not frivolous, and very well played. “I Will” with added bass part was not quite so inspiring – still work to do there. “Vashon Ferry” was good; the key players have been working on it for some time. I was improving the bass part for now, but dearly need some actual rehearsal time with this one before it is presentable.

“Space Circus” was quite nice. “Mad World” shaky, but not a train wreck. “Little Red Truck” continues to evolve, but isn’t played with enough confidence to sound complete yet. “Fallout” is still in the R&D phase – the form and all of the parts are written, but there is much work yet to be done before it is playable. “Gnossienne”, with the new arrangement (and finally giving Darlene a chance to get her oboe out) remains a work in progress.

A rough night. Saturday will be better.