Performance Team Rehearsal

A Tuning the Air Journal

Monday, November 7, 2011 – Performance Team Rehearsal

First rehearsal on the heels of last week’s retreat with Contemporary Guitar Ensemble. Everyone in attendance.

We began with a review of the pieces we learned from CGE, discussing how much work each piece would require to make them performance-ready. One piece will require some time dedicated to learning parts, and that was postponed to some combination of the Wednesday and Saturday rehearsals. The Piazzolla piece, “Tango Apasionado” seemed to be closest, and so we focused on that. Travis had missed the session with CGE where we learned this one, so he listened at first to determine which part would most benefit from another player. We worked through the piece, clarifying details, and Travis ultimately began learning the melody part. Several runs, and the piece came together. It is on the setlist for Thursday. We touched on the transition from the piece it will follow, to general enthusiasm.

Most of the rest of the rehearsal was centered on getting Tony up to speed on pieces he will be playing while he is here the next 2 weeks.

“Fallout” was first. He has taken on the melody part, which is more than a little tricky (“twisted” would better describe it). He had it substantially in his hands, but needed a bit of detail work on the phrasing and arrangement.

A little detail work on “Mad World”. Tony is bolstering the “off-the-beat” part of the melody, with Taylor. We ran it several times. I was paying particular attention to the melody, as I have been getting the score together to send to CGE, and needed to get a couple of details straight.

We did one runthrough of “Connecticut Yankee”, experimenting with a slightly quicker tempo, which we ultimately decided to adopt.

“Larks’ Tongues” next. This is a piece that Tony has a lot of familiarity with, so plugging him in was not a great effort. Just a little work on the middle section, giving Jaxie and Darlene the opportunity to stretch out a bit on their parts.

Last up was the B Minor Prelude. Several runs, with a small last-minute side trip into a particular passage that seemed to me to be missing a note. Tempo is really the most critical issue for the piece. It is not fast, but the motion of the parts is crisp. Finding and maintaining the right tempo continues to be a challenge, and we looked at a number of ways to address this.

The Wednesday afternoon free-for-all rehearsal is on, so we will look at this further.