Performance team work with Nigel Gavin

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday, September 10, 2011 – Performance team work with Nigel Gavin

The performance team met this morning at Fremont Abbey. It was our first time back in the performance space since the end of last season, and it felt good to get back home. Nigel Gavin, in town for a number of gigs, worked with us for then entire rehearsal.

When it was learned that Nigel would be in town and available, the first words out of the Music Director’s mouth were “Connecticut Yankee!”, and that was the focus of our work for the day.

We opened with a bit of circulation in C Major. Refreshing.

Nigel then began by performing a solo arrangement of the piece on his 7-string OST guitar. Very entertaining, and for those of us who are familiar with the ensemble arrangement as it was performed by the League in the early 90’s, there were a number of wonderful little turns and jokes in this arrangement that were delightful.

Nigel switched to the NST guitar, and we got down to the business of working through the piece section by section. A transcription of the piece – incomplete, but a useful beginning point – has been floating around, so many of the team were already familiar with the basic form at least, as well as some of the bits and pieces. I played the piece with the League, and with a little homework this week my part had reassembled itself, and I was able to lay down a reliable bass part as we learned the twisty chromatic melody bits. Many points of clarification in terms of fingerings, harmonies, and details of dynamics. Particularly fun was to watch and hear as Darlene, whose background is NOT in the “oral tradition” of learning music, managed to pick up these melodies on the oboe.

Once we had the first section up and running we took a short break. When we reconvened, Nigel asked us to play something for him. “Space Circus” and “Larks’ Tongues”. Nice to have a little verification that these pieces are now reliably performable.

On to the next part of “Yankee” – the marching arpeggios. This was pretty fast work. The final section – comprised of a kind of cascading polyrhythms – was the part we had the least understanding of going in. As is often the case, it is really quite simple; just not obvious. With that, the sense was that all of the bits and parts were residing somewhere in the collective knowledge of the group, and that we would be able to reconstruct everything in upcoming rehearsals. We ran the piece several times.

Another short break. Nigel performed one more piece for us. Chris asked him if he had any other material to present, and he brought out a harmonic sketch that he thought we might be able to take and develop into something. Referred to as “Spiral Up”, it is a set of modulating triads that, after 4 sequences, comes back to the beginning; a kind of harmonic ouroboros. We looked at a number of possibilities for variations, improvisations and development. At the end, he handed the handwritten sketch to the Music Director, who will scan and distribute it.

We closed the day’s work with a bit of circulation in F Minor.

A number of us are performing at a House Concert with Nigel this evening. Travis returns this weekend and will be onboard for Monday’s rehearsal. I’ll be sitting in directing the work that night, as the Music Director has to work, and I suspect that in addition to reviewing “Connecticut Yankee” to make sure that everything is in place, we will largely work with getting Travis up to speed on the work we’ve been doing in his absence.