Concert #8: Taking a whack at humidity
Wednesday was a humid day; there was a reason I went to the mall and ran errands until I got interrupted by camp nonsense. I was back on flute this week, so back to the second row. Good thing--there were just two flutes there, me and two-chairs-down. We also didn't have any bassoons to start with, so only the right half of our row had any people; all the clarinets showed up. Weird. The one bassoon, Amaryllis, I'm not sure why she's usually late, but she generally gets there right as rehearsal starts or soon after. Our other bassoon, the section leader, lives the farthest of all the band members that I'm aware of, and I think her car is getting older or not as reliable, so she'd mentioned not coming to every rehearsal but still playing all the concerts. On those shows, she plays second part. We also didn't have an oboe player at rehearsal, either. What is with that part of the band? I found out some people were on vacation, someone had something come up, and at least one person didn't bother to mention to either flute section leader (the one currently playing the top part, or the actual leader who is playing percussion while recovering from medical issues) that she wasn't coming. Great. Oh well.
Rehearsal ran long. It was the assistant director's other summer concert, and yeah, things just don't go quickly with him. We actually ended up cutting one song, and will save it for the fall, because it was almost 9:15 and we still had that one and the final march to go. We just set it aside, played the march, and were done. Actually, we cut two songs--we'd played the other, the theme song to a particular film featuring Marty McFly and Huey Lewis (it wasn't the Huey Lewis song, though). I guess the oboe player had lobbied to play it, so when she didn't show up the AD was bummed that she was missing it. …And then we played it, and it wasn't great, so perhaps she dodged a bullet. :P Actually, I liked the first part of it, but the coda was terrible and went on way too long. The song was in Db, which is an unusual key for band (though we do a fair amount of marches in it, so it's not like we have no experience with that key), and some of the other instruments must have had cruddy parts, and there you go. The AD had seen it in our big book of band music binder, noticed it didn't have any performance notes next to it…and, after playing through it, wondered no longer. At least one person, the Eb clarinet player, wondered if we could find a way to dispose of the piece, rather than just filing it back in a cabinet.
Oh, the Eb player. She will switch between the Eb and the Bb (standard) clarinet, since some songs don't have Eb parts. She has a clarinet stand and will swap them, depending on what she needs. Except she went to grab the Eb off the stand--and the stand came with. Oh. Heh, must be a little humid. And then she went to pull it out--and it wouldn't budge. She's then holding the bell of the clarinet, grasping at the stand; no luck. At this point I try grabbing it, and it's definitely not coming out. Wow. We'd never seen that before, and it's certainly not like she jams the clarinet onto the base. It's flared like the bell so that the clarinet is secure on there. Finally she tapped the stand against the riser behind us, and that jarred it loose enough that she got the stand out. Holy cow. There really wasn't a way for her to play with it in the bell, and considering it was the Eb clarinet, she kind of needs to play it. Had it been the Bb, she might've just sat out. Wild.
We also did this polka that I recognized as being the song playing behind Paul Konrad's weather segments on Channel 9, at least some of the time. It has a D.S. al Coda toward the end, which is all fine and dandy…except the AD got to a certain point and went, okay, where do we go with the D.S.? Uh…we have to get there first! We'd only just gotten to letter E. We had 18 measures to go until we got to the D.S. He frowned, looked at his music, then went, okay, guess I'll just be the happy conductor, and then he just started conducting a circular pattern. Oops. Well, we all have our moments. I wonder if he'd skipped a page or something to jump that far ahead. I mean, the entire band was like, we're not there yet! Well, this is why we have rehearsals.
There were also a couple bittersweet moments, involving two members of one family. There's a husband and wife team in the band (he plays trombone, she plays sax), and the husband's mom passed away within the past couple years. In her memory, money was given to the band. I think the tale goes that she was known as blue eyes, or had blue eyes, which made her son think of Frank Sinatra. Therefore, we got a Sinatra medley in her honor. Aw. That led the main director--playing trombone this week--to mention his dad used to call his mom "blue eyes," except he knew better than to call her "Ol' Blue Eyes." Sounds wise. The wife, meanwhile, had an uncle who faithfully came to all our band concerts, despite getting into his early 90s and living in Lansing, which is on the Illinois/Indiana border and very close to where I'll be tomorrow to start. Many people in the band knew him, and he passed away in the past year, so that last march, honoring the Navy, also was played in his honor. I guess he was a proud WWII Naval veteran. I don't recall ever meeting him but the band seemed fond of him and sad to hear of his passing.
After being interrupted in my errands on Wednesday, I went back out to look for more comforters and sheets on Thursday. Bed Bath & Beyond and Walmart had some potential candidates, and I realize I didn't check out Kohl's. Oh well. I was done with the stores at 5 and decided to get to the park early. I still had more camp stuff to look at, plus then I could have dinner, and I'd just be there. My regular hangout place is a different park, but I just didn't feel like driving there for an hour, only to pack up and leave again. I don't just go to the band's park because there's a time limit on parking, so that's why I typically don't get there before 6, when the parking restrictions end. However, it's a two-hour limit, so honestly I could get there at 4:01 and be fine, but I don't want to push it, and I don't want to be there *that* early. It's funny to see so many people already there in the audience, sitting and having dinner and enjoying the evening. It was lovely last night, with occasional breezes, much better than Wednesday. Also, when the raffle happened, the lady who came to sit behind me on the benches ended up winning with the early-bird number of 33. That's pretty cool. Especially since they gave out all 1,000 programs and two of the winners were in the 900s!
Both the oboe player and bassoon section leader showed up for the concert, phew, and one of the first flutes came over to me to say, when she'd seen there were just two of us on second flute, that she started playing any second parts she could. Some of our music had just one part, and others had both 1st and 2nd together. Since I work off of copies of music, and the originals are left in the manila envelope to turn in after the concert, I was able to give her some of the originals. The only one I didn't give her was the Sinatra one, since that hadn't been in the envelope last week (too new) and, while I copied it Wednesday night, it wasn't all marked up and I ended up using the original myself for the concert. No big deal. I was grateful that she helped out. Oh, right, during rehearsal I'd cut out in one song because, due to the humidity, I was getting condensation on my fingers through the holes in my keys! Fancy flutes have open-hole keys--no, I don't exactly know the purpose--and yeah, my A key was leaky. Ew. I recall apologizing to TCD because she'd had to hold the fort while I wiped my hand off. We had no such issues Thursday, though by the end of the concert I was honestly cool enough that I'd contemplated putting my sweater on, though by that point we had just two pieces left and I figured I could hold out. I do want to mention that we did the delightfully '70s cheesy medley of songs from a particular boxing movie from 1976 (yo, Adrian would have liked it). We'd done it last year but I'd played piccolo. The flute part is different enough that I did enjoy it this time. In fact, it's been running through my head much of today, especially as there's a really nice part down at the bottom of page 1 going into page 2--my favorite part of the whole thing. A little bit later, the flutes even get a soli and we divide after a few measures, so the second flutes were even a bit important last night. Nice. The second to last song was a suite I'd done at least once in college, and my copy actually came from camp back in 2000. It turns out I have a revised edition, which is similar enough to the actual original that I can play along with it no problem, but there came a point in the second movement where TCD wasn't playing, even though I knew the prior flute solo was over and everyone could come in. This is a flute/piccolo combined part, so she had looked down at the a2 and thought that's where the flutes came back in. No; the flutes come in after D (the flute solo is at C), and the piccolo doesn't come in until after F. (She'd been resting for a very long time.) This was when we compared music and I realized what I had was different from hers. Hmm. Interesting. Also, the Eb clarinet starts that movement and is the only person with the steady 8th note motif--either her or the oboe, as with the oboe gone there was nothing for a minute (the Eb player for some reason wasn't playing when we first got started…maybe momentary brain fart) and the AD was like, if you've got cues, play 'em! The piccolo player said she'd had cues, which confused me since my part did not. I'm not sure if she has a legit piccolo only part or what. Interesting. Okay, so I guess I'll need to get myself a copy of that at some point. I hadn't bothered when we got this week's envelope because, well, I figured I'd already had it. It's one of the Holst suites, very well known, so I'm sure it'll come around again. The question is, will I remember I don't have the same version? Hmm.
Normally with the AD, things run long, and they had on Wednesday night; I didn't get home until after 10. But Thursday, after cutting two songs, we were done by 8:38 as per the AD's watch. Holy cow. I was in my car before 9, and that was with being poky and using the restroom and what have you. Luckily for me I really didn't have any camp emails to deal with, so I was even off the computer by 10 PM. That's unusual this week. The people who sit near me know about camp and know I'll be gone next week. Sorry, guys. The following week is the second jazz concert, so it'll be several weeks before I make it back--and then that's the last one. Wild. Where does the summer go?
Rehearsal ran long. It was the assistant director's other summer concert, and yeah, things just don't go quickly with him. We actually ended up cutting one song, and will save it for the fall, because it was almost 9:15 and we still had that one and the final march to go. We just set it aside, played the march, and were done. Actually, we cut two songs--we'd played the other, the theme song to a particular film featuring Marty McFly and Huey Lewis (it wasn't the Huey Lewis song, though). I guess the oboe player had lobbied to play it, so when she didn't show up the AD was bummed that she was missing it. …And then we played it, and it wasn't great, so perhaps she dodged a bullet. :P Actually, I liked the first part of it, but the coda was terrible and went on way too long. The song was in Db, which is an unusual key for band (though we do a fair amount of marches in it, so it's not like we have no experience with that key), and some of the other instruments must have had cruddy parts, and there you go. The AD had seen it in our big book of band music binder, noticed it didn't have any performance notes next to it…and, after playing through it, wondered no longer. At least one person, the Eb clarinet player, wondered if we could find a way to dispose of the piece, rather than just filing it back in a cabinet.
Oh, the Eb player. She will switch between the Eb and the Bb (standard) clarinet, since some songs don't have Eb parts. She has a clarinet stand and will swap them, depending on what she needs. Except she went to grab the Eb off the stand--and the stand came with. Oh. Heh, must be a little humid. And then she went to pull it out--and it wouldn't budge. She's then holding the bell of the clarinet, grasping at the stand; no luck. At this point I try grabbing it, and it's definitely not coming out. Wow. We'd never seen that before, and it's certainly not like she jams the clarinet onto the base. It's flared like the bell so that the clarinet is secure on there. Finally she tapped the stand against the riser behind us, and that jarred it loose enough that she got the stand out. Holy cow. There really wasn't a way for her to play with it in the bell, and considering it was the Eb clarinet, she kind of needs to play it. Had it been the Bb, she might've just sat out. Wild.
We also did this polka that I recognized as being the song playing behind Paul Konrad's weather segments on Channel 9, at least some of the time. It has a D.S. al Coda toward the end, which is all fine and dandy…except the AD got to a certain point and went, okay, where do we go with the D.S.? Uh…we have to get there first! We'd only just gotten to letter E. We had 18 measures to go until we got to the D.S. He frowned, looked at his music, then went, okay, guess I'll just be the happy conductor, and then he just started conducting a circular pattern. Oops. Well, we all have our moments. I wonder if he'd skipped a page or something to jump that far ahead. I mean, the entire band was like, we're not there yet! Well, this is why we have rehearsals.
There were also a couple bittersweet moments, involving two members of one family. There's a husband and wife team in the band (he plays trombone, she plays sax), and the husband's mom passed away within the past couple years. In her memory, money was given to the band. I think the tale goes that she was known as blue eyes, or had blue eyes, which made her son think of Frank Sinatra. Therefore, we got a Sinatra medley in her honor. Aw. That led the main director--playing trombone this week--to mention his dad used to call his mom "blue eyes," except he knew better than to call her "Ol' Blue Eyes." Sounds wise. The wife, meanwhile, had an uncle who faithfully came to all our band concerts, despite getting into his early 90s and living in Lansing, which is on the Illinois/Indiana border and very close to where I'll be tomorrow to start. Many people in the band knew him, and he passed away in the past year, so that last march, honoring the Navy, also was played in his honor. I guess he was a proud WWII Naval veteran. I don't recall ever meeting him but the band seemed fond of him and sad to hear of his passing.
After being interrupted in my errands on Wednesday, I went back out to look for more comforters and sheets on Thursday. Bed Bath & Beyond and Walmart had some potential candidates, and I realize I didn't check out Kohl's. Oh well. I was done with the stores at 5 and decided to get to the park early. I still had more camp stuff to look at, plus then I could have dinner, and I'd just be there. My regular hangout place is a different park, but I just didn't feel like driving there for an hour, only to pack up and leave again. I don't just go to the band's park because there's a time limit on parking, so that's why I typically don't get there before 6, when the parking restrictions end. However, it's a two-hour limit, so honestly I could get there at 4:01 and be fine, but I don't want to push it, and I don't want to be there *that* early. It's funny to see so many people already there in the audience, sitting and having dinner and enjoying the evening. It was lovely last night, with occasional breezes, much better than Wednesday. Also, when the raffle happened, the lady who came to sit behind me on the benches ended up winning with the early-bird number of 33. That's pretty cool. Especially since they gave out all 1,000 programs and two of the winners were in the 900s!
Both the oboe player and bassoon section leader showed up for the concert, phew, and one of the first flutes came over to me to say, when she'd seen there were just two of us on second flute, that she started playing any second parts she could. Some of our music had just one part, and others had both 1st and 2nd together. Since I work off of copies of music, and the originals are left in the manila envelope to turn in after the concert, I was able to give her some of the originals. The only one I didn't give her was the Sinatra one, since that hadn't been in the envelope last week (too new) and, while I copied it Wednesday night, it wasn't all marked up and I ended up using the original myself for the concert. No big deal. I was grateful that she helped out. Oh, right, during rehearsal I'd cut out in one song because, due to the humidity, I was getting condensation on my fingers through the holes in my keys! Fancy flutes have open-hole keys--no, I don't exactly know the purpose--and yeah, my A key was leaky. Ew. I recall apologizing to TCD because she'd had to hold the fort while I wiped my hand off. We had no such issues Thursday, though by the end of the concert I was honestly cool enough that I'd contemplated putting my sweater on, though by that point we had just two pieces left and I figured I could hold out. I do want to mention that we did the delightfully '70s cheesy medley of songs from a particular boxing movie from 1976 (yo, Adrian would have liked it). We'd done it last year but I'd played piccolo. The flute part is different enough that I did enjoy it this time. In fact, it's been running through my head much of today, especially as there's a really nice part down at the bottom of page 1 going into page 2--my favorite part of the whole thing. A little bit later, the flutes even get a soli and we divide after a few measures, so the second flutes were even a bit important last night. Nice. The second to last song was a suite I'd done at least once in college, and my copy actually came from camp back in 2000. It turns out I have a revised edition, which is similar enough to the actual original that I can play along with it no problem, but there came a point in the second movement where TCD wasn't playing, even though I knew the prior flute solo was over and everyone could come in. This is a flute/piccolo combined part, so she had looked down at the a2 and thought that's where the flutes came back in. No; the flutes come in after D (the flute solo is at C), and the piccolo doesn't come in until after F. (She'd been resting for a very long time.) This was when we compared music and I realized what I had was different from hers. Hmm. Interesting. Also, the Eb clarinet starts that movement and is the only person with the steady 8th note motif--either her or the oboe, as with the oboe gone there was nothing for a minute (the Eb player for some reason wasn't playing when we first got started…maybe momentary brain fart) and the AD was like, if you've got cues, play 'em! The piccolo player said she'd had cues, which confused me since my part did not. I'm not sure if she has a legit piccolo only part or what. Interesting. Okay, so I guess I'll need to get myself a copy of that at some point. I hadn't bothered when we got this week's envelope because, well, I figured I'd already had it. It's one of the Holst suites, very well known, so I'm sure it'll come around again. The question is, will I remember I don't have the same version? Hmm.
Normally with the AD, things run long, and they had on Wednesday night; I didn't get home until after 10. But Thursday, after cutting two songs, we were done by 8:38 as per the AD's watch. Holy cow. I was in my car before 9, and that was with being poky and using the restroom and what have you. Luckily for me I really didn't have any camp emails to deal with, so I was even off the computer by 10 PM. That's unusual this week. The people who sit near me know about camp and know I'll be gone next week. Sorry, guys. The following week is the second jazz concert, so it'll be several weeks before I make it back--and then that's the last one. Wild. Where does the summer go?