Performance Team Rehearsal

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday November 12, 2011 – Performance Team Rehearsal

B Minor Fugue day. This is a major undertaking. In some ways, a little silly in light of the fact that there are only 4 more shows. But we are not interested in cruising into home plate, so we are turning up the heat. This was a hard session of piecing together a very complex composition. There is a very clear and followable logic to Bob’s arrangement, but it will take a while for us to be able to discharge the parts accurately enough to really follow the arrangement, so for now it mostly involves a lot of counting. Tony, who does not have a part in this arrangement, became the designated measure counter, which was very useful. It is going to take a while, but “a while” is something we don’t really have, so we need to push. Agreed to have the first half memorized and playable for Monday night’s rehearsal.

Primarily work on matters of detail on several pieces that Bill had observations on. Specifically “Slow Burn”, “Tango Apasionato” and “I Will”. We managed a lot of detail work on the first two, clearing up the areas that were weak; largely matters of tempo and feel, rather than execution of parts. This is a time-consuming process, but in the end a very fruitful one.

We needed to move on to “five-five-FIVE”, so there was not time to properly look into “I Will”. Bill took a few minutes to articulate his observations, which included more than one bitter pill. Without decision, we agreed to come back to this on Monday.

“five-five-FIVE” was next. It is a twisty little beast. Chris is determined to have this up and running for Thursday’s show. A bit of dissention about picking approaches and tempo, but by the end the piece had a shape. More of this on Monday, and setting Wednesday’s afternoon rehearsal aside to dig in as deeply as possible.