Concert #4: Prelude to the Fourth (and the semi-surprise encore)
The jazz group performed last week, so we were off. Weird, because the jazz group is usually *after* our Fourth of July concert; it threw everyone off. I'm already exhausted by this summer, so I wasn't upset about the time away--I needed to chill pretty badly that week, to be honest--but now we go straight through 'til August. Phew.
And then, of course, we sort of have *two* Fourth of July concerts this year. Yes, the 4th falls on a Thursday, and we'll be performing this week, but because the cannons are unable to join us on the actual holiday, that meant we did 1812 a full week beforehand. Double the patriotism, double the fun, I suppose.
Avery had gotten in touch with me recently, in part because she's doing The Little Mermaid at NCC this summer, and this is the time of year she sends out a note regarding performances. I'd realized recently that we haven't really talked in ages, and she must have too, because she sent a second email asking if I wanted to get together. Wednesdays work well, but I was not up for Chinese Kitchen. Thankfully she came up with Braconi's, which is a place I've heard of, and it's kitty-corner from Chinese Kitchen, so that was easy. Knowing that the heat switch had been flipped, I neither wanted heavy food nor leftovers, so I made sure not to eat a ton earlier in the day and got a salad, the chef's salad since it had meat. It should have had a hard-boiled egg, too. However, the salad was this mound of food, iceberg with strips of sliced meat on top, and by the time I was able to see into the center of the salad, I'd eaten half of it and then realized, yeah, there's no egg here. Boo. I was disappointed but dealt with it. I definitely didn't regret getting a salad, though. Avery got a fish dish that was huge, and she ended up taking a ton of food with her. Overall, she's doing well, and of course she wants me to come see her show, but it's always been hard. The show she usually did (they used to do two summer shows; I think they're down to one) was the later one that always conflicted with camp. Even with no camp any longer, band in and of itself makes me just want to go home the rest of the week. I'm just not up for it.
However, she got me involved in a way--she's the dance captain, and it sounds like some of the higher-ups have dinners together to talk about the show, and at their dinner Tuesday night they found out their percussionist and drummer bailed (that's two separate people). The show starts in a couple weeks. Not good. She went, hmm, my friend plays in a band...they should have drummers...I'll see if she knows anyone who can do it! When I got to band, I was talking to a couple of the guys, and one of them was super excited about it. He said his daughters LOVED the movie back in the day and he knows all the songs (I had no idea he had kids...), and he gave me his email to share. When I got home, Avery had emailed me contact info for someone (she's a gal I've met before, via Avery, at a few other shows), so I emailed the gal and included the percussionist, and when I got home Thursday night, there was this whole chain of replies and a fourth person had gotten involved, oh wow. And, the percussionist had come up to me before the concert to say that he'd be heading over to sign the contract after we were done, and thanks! Wow, that's awesome! So...good job on Avery for bringing that up.
I'm going to say, I was not all that impressed with our waiter. He wasn't terrible; he just wasn't that great. He wasn't super attentive, for one. He did ask if we wanted separate checks, which we did, however he didn't seem to like that Avery handed him a credit card, yet I wanted to pay him in cash and had to ask him to change out a $10. He brought me back two $5s but immediately walked away. We'd kind of been waiting around for him so we could pay him and leave, since we both had to get to our respective rehearsals. Okay...guess I'll just leave my money in the payment book on the table... But he had a good reason to go--we were seated next to the patio, and he'd gone out there with a jacket over his head and started closing the umbrellas over the tables. Oh, is it raining? You had to go down a long hallway to get to the front door, and sure enough, it was pouring. Wow. We ran to our cars, and while she left before I did, we both saw this Model T-like car, no top, driving through the lot. (She mentioned it in her email.) I thought I saw another older car as well, so one of my coworkers suggested perhaps there was a cruise night scheduled. Makes sense. All I know is that the door was closed when I got to band, and while it opened briefly, it closed soon afterward because of lightning; we heard booming much of the night.
We know the booming wasn't coming from the percussion section. So, when I went back there to ask about the show, one of the sax players was standing there. Oh, I didn't realize she was friends with the people in this section. She's not necessarily--she was back there to play. I guess she hurt her hand somehow and couldn't play sax, so she up and joined the percussionists. Um...you kinda need to know what you're doing back there. I don't know that she's had any percussion training. She was put on bass drum, probably considered the easiest of the instruments, yet as it turns out, it's not that easy. She had solos. She missed them. Like, I have jumped in to help out with percussion at camp (and finally have the pictures to prove it!), and I find it SUPER hard to read their music, because it's not musical. You have the same thing for measure upon measure, and it's easy to get lost, and it's not like they're marking musical cues in there (i.e., the trumpets come in at measure 87) like I would with my music. Also, you need to be heard. They kept telling her to play louder, and even before the concert, a couple guys were back there giving her bass drum lessons and helping her to hit the drum harder. Like...why is this even happening? I could understand if somebody was missing back there and another person with some percussion knowledge jumped back there to help, but to me, this was like, hey, I want to earn credit for making every concert, so even though I can't play my instrument, I will take on this other section because, what, like it's hard? I just...find that insulting at this level. Me jumping in to help with B Band-level music at camp? Fine. That's beginner stuff. And I was playing the triangle. You go "ting" and that's it. Here, where you have to know and use technique, and be able to count (and you already know how I feel about the saxes and their counting ability lately), it's just...sigh. There could be info I don't have that would cause this to make more sense, but on the surface, holy crap, just sit out the concert. And I only saw her play a couple of songs, so I don't know if she gave up, or if the parts were covered otherwise, or what. Can you tell this person isn't a favorite of mine normally, and this isn't helping the situation? Oh well.
Much of the music we did was from earlier concerts, including the two vocal pieces we did in the fall. My stand partner hasn't been around when we've had a vocal soloist, so I let her know that we're pretty much tacet the whole time. There were a couple places where some of the other flutes had joined in (we cut down to one or two on a part for soloists), but it's like, what's the point? I'm not interested in playing 16 measures of a piece; I'd rather just sit there. The exception came when we did the second song, selections from The Music Man; I'd been asked to play during the split parts, as just one person on second flute couldn't be heard. I reprised that role. And, it wasn't just the female soloist; she'd assembled a barbershop quartet. That was pretty cool actually. They did a whole a cappella bit with "Lida Rose" in the middle, and one of the men stuck around to sing to "Marian" (the female vocalist) during "Marian the Librarian." The only issue, and shades of my college choir--they had gotten off key during "Lida Rose," so that when "Marian" and the band came back in, it took a couple notes to get everyone back on track. Oops. Thankfully they were better at the concert, plus they got a second shot at it. "Marian," bless her, had turned around to cue the director and the band as to when to come in following "Lida Rose," except nobody bothered to look at her. She was trying to get everyone's attention, too. I saw, and I said something about it. Oh, right, I'd said something after her first song--we messed up the ending of it, because she has her own a cappella measure in that, and the clarinets asked for another run-through of the last line to clean it up. The director said, but we played it at the concert! (Meaning we'd already performed it back in November and gotten through it then...you know, seven and a half months ago.) I interjected, yeah, and we messed it up then too! (They played through it one more time, and it was fine.) Yeah, I was being the peanut gallery again, but you know, sometimes you need it.
I don't think anything else stands out from Wednesday night. Thursday, the big day--I always get there early when we have cannons. It's the most popular concert of the summer. I don't even bother with trying to find parking in the adjacent lot; I get my car to the big parking deck by about 4 PM and just hang out in the park. I'm far from the only one there, and lots of people had already placed their chairs and blankets to stake out their spots. Two-Chairs-Down showed up with her own chair, and I helped her unfold it; it was a lounge chair of sorts. Her daughter hobbled over and I said, make sure she doesn't fall asleep! The daughter had hurt her foot several months ago and was fresh out of her boot--like, it came off that day--so she was still pretty stiff and moving slowly. She said she should've had it on still since she was walking long distances, but for whatever reason it wasn't with her.
There was an alumni band performing before us, at 6 o'clock. This was for the district where AD2 teaches, and she was directing this band. No programs, so I handwrote their music on a piece of paper. A few members of our band were helping out--our second oboe player (she was the only oboe in the alumni band, and there were solos), the male tenor sax player, a couple percussionists, AD2's husband. Friends and family of alums were welcome to join in. I also think I recognized someone in the flute section, which was cool, especially because I thought she had moved out of the country and her family no longer lived in the area. Alas, I didn't get the chance to see her afterward. Because they were performing, we couldn't get onto the stage until 6:45, and at that point I pretty much went straight downstairs to the bathroom to freshen up and get changed, and by the time that was done, all the alums were gone. Also, I was off in my own little world. The French horn section leader's older daughter is one of our sound people; she's in middle school or possibly starting high school. Anyway, she was there and washing her hands while I was at the sink, and she was talking to me, and I seriously didn't think she was talking to me. She wears a headset like the other audio people and I legit thought she was talking into it. (She was like, my microphone isn't flipped down...yeah, I wasn't paying attention.) I did apologize to her. I'm hoping I remember to say something at this next concert, too. I could blame it on getting too much sun, except I was wearing a hat.
...And because there wasn't much sun past a certain point. It was definitely sunny when I got there, but it started clouding over by 6. Like, I kept looking to my right (west) and those clouds did *not* look good. Sure enough, soon after I got inside and was putting my stuff behind the setup, I looked out the side window and saw flashes. Lightning. Great. The door was closed by then so we couldn't tell what was happening, but the director got on the PA system and made an announcement that there was a storm west of us and it would be here in about 20 minutes, so we might postpone the start of the show. Oh, dear. The Eb clarinet player said she had a friend and her kid in the audience, and the friend hadn't parked close by, so the Eb player handed the friend her keys and said, go in my car, turn on the DVD player, and be safe!
As it turned out, the storms skirted us, and not only did we start on time, but we got everything in. Everything. Cannons and all. I did see lightning in the sky, but apparently nobody was bothered by it, and I don't know that it rained, so okay. Now, I did get my own special scare before the concert. I was thrown off by the late start, and getting changed late, and putting my stuff away late (part of why I was a bubblehead to the sound girl), so that when the piccolo player said to me, he wants two piccolos, as I was walking back to my seat after stashing my flute bag, I was like, what are you talking about? She said, the Sousa, he wants two piccolos. ...We're doing the Sousa?! Great! Sure enough, the director had a revised copy of the concert itinerary on his stand, and at the very bottom was added S&SF, with the note "brass and pic up front!" Goody. Good thing I'm already playing piccolo on this concert, so I already had it out. And, since the local TV crew was there, we also had to make sure we stood in the right place so they could see us. We usually go all the way to the front of the stage, but the light doesn't hit our faces so we can't be seen. We made sure to stand farther back this time around. Anyway, we had our piccolo duet, and my gosh do we not play in tune at the start of that. That's more on me than her, since she's been playing and I haven't by that point (I played the previous song, a march, but mostly down an octave until the end; that was my chance to warm up), but still. It's so bad. The rest of it is mostly a split part and it comes out okay, but we just can never play that beginning part in tune. I guess we're giving it that authentic fife sound, maybe? Maybe? But there was a cute moment toward the end. The cannoneers dress the part, and are both northern and southern, so at the very end of the song (a Civil War medley) they had one Union guy and one Confederate guy come on stage, meet in the middle, and shake hands. The crowd loved it. We did 1812 right after that, then one last march, and finally the encore. The piccolo player had been all, you'll be fine! Yeah, I know, and part of me figured this would happen and I did in fact practice it last week, but still. Had I known I'd be playing a total of four songs on piccolo this week, I'd have moved up into the front row. It all worked out okay, but logistically it wasn't that great. Oh well. We made it through. And we get to do S&SF again this week, which I knew because it was scheduled, but you can't have Fourth of July without it.
And then, of course, we sort of have *two* Fourth of July concerts this year. Yes, the 4th falls on a Thursday, and we'll be performing this week, but because the cannons are unable to join us on the actual holiday, that meant we did 1812 a full week beforehand. Double the patriotism, double the fun, I suppose.
Avery had gotten in touch with me recently, in part because she's doing The Little Mermaid at NCC this summer, and this is the time of year she sends out a note regarding performances. I'd realized recently that we haven't really talked in ages, and she must have too, because she sent a second email asking if I wanted to get together. Wednesdays work well, but I was not up for Chinese Kitchen. Thankfully she came up with Braconi's, which is a place I've heard of, and it's kitty-corner from Chinese Kitchen, so that was easy. Knowing that the heat switch had been flipped, I neither wanted heavy food nor leftovers, so I made sure not to eat a ton earlier in the day and got a salad, the chef's salad since it had meat. It should have had a hard-boiled egg, too. However, the salad was this mound of food, iceberg with strips of sliced meat on top, and by the time I was able to see into the center of the salad, I'd eaten half of it and then realized, yeah, there's no egg here. Boo. I was disappointed but dealt with it. I definitely didn't regret getting a salad, though. Avery got a fish dish that was huge, and she ended up taking a ton of food with her. Overall, she's doing well, and of course she wants me to come see her show, but it's always been hard. The show she usually did (they used to do two summer shows; I think they're down to one) was the later one that always conflicted with camp. Even with no camp any longer, band in and of itself makes me just want to go home the rest of the week. I'm just not up for it.
However, she got me involved in a way--she's the dance captain, and it sounds like some of the higher-ups have dinners together to talk about the show, and at their dinner Tuesday night they found out their percussionist and drummer bailed (that's two separate people). The show starts in a couple weeks. Not good. She went, hmm, my friend plays in a band...they should have drummers...I'll see if she knows anyone who can do it! When I got to band, I was talking to a couple of the guys, and one of them was super excited about it. He said his daughters LOVED the movie back in the day and he knows all the songs (I had no idea he had kids...), and he gave me his email to share. When I got home, Avery had emailed me contact info for someone (she's a gal I've met before, via Avery, at a few other shows), so I emailed the gal and included the percussionist, and when I got home Thursday night, there was this whole chain of replies and a fourth person had gotten involved, oh wow. And, the percussionist had come up to me before the concert to say that he'd be heading over to sign the contract after we were done, and thanks! Wow, that's awesome! So...good job on Avery for bringing that up.
I'm going to say, I was not all that impressed with our waiter. He wasn't terrible; he just wasn't that great. He wasn't super attentive, for one. He did ask if we wanted separate checks, which we did, however he didn't seem to like that Avery handed him a credit card, yet I wanted to pay him in cash and had to ask him to change out a $10. He brought me back two $5s but immediately walked away. We'd kind of been waiting around for him so we could pay him and leave, since we both had to get to our respective rehearsals. Okay...guess I'll just leave my money in the payment book on the table... But he had a good reason to go--we were seated next to the patio, and he'd gone out there with a jacket over his head and started closing the umbrellas over the tables. Oh, is it raining? You had to go down a long hallway to get to the front door, and sure enough, it was pouring. Wow. We ran to our cars, and while she left before I did, we both saw this Model T-like car, no top, driving through the lot. (She mentioned it in her email.) I thought I saw another older car as well, so one of my coworkers suggested perhaps there was a cruise night scheduled. Makes sense. All I know is that the door was closed when I got to band, and while it opened briefly, it closed soon afterward because of lightning; we heard booming much of the night.
We know the booming wasn't coming from the percussion section. So, when I went back there to ask about the show, one of the sax players was standing there. Oh, I didn't realize she was friends with the people in this section. She's not necessarily--she was back there to play. I guess she hurt her hand somehow and couldn't play sax, so she up and joined the percussionists. Um...you kinda need to know what you're doing back there. I don't know that she's had any percussion training. She was put on bass drum, probably considered the easiest of the instruments, yet as it turns out, it's not that easy. She had solos. She missed them. Like, I have jumped in to help out with percussion at camp (and finally have the pictures to prove it!), and I find it SUPER hard to read their music, because it's not musical. You have the same thing for measure upon measure, and it's easy to get lost, and it's not like they're marking musical cues in there (i.e., the trumpets come in at measure 87) like I would with my music. Also, you need to be heard. They kept telling her to play louder, and even before the concert, a couple guys were back there giving her bass drum lessons and helping her to hit the drum harder. Like...why is this even happening? I could understand if somebody was missing back there and another person with some percussion knowledge jumped back there to help, but to me, this was like, hey, I want to earn credit for making every concert, so even though I can't play my instrument, I will take on this other section because, what, like it's hard? I just...find that insulting at this level. Me jumping in to help with B Band-level music at camp? Fine. That's beginner stuff. And I was playing the triangle. You go "ting" and that's it. Here, where you have to know and use technique, and be able to count (and you already know how I feel about the saxes and their counting ability lately), it's just...sigh. There could be info I don't have that would cause this to make more sense, but on the surface, holy crap, just sit out the concert. And I only saw her play a couple of songs, so I don't know if she gave up, or if the parts were covered otherwise, or what. Can you tell this person isn't a favorite of mine normally, and this isn't helping the situation? Oh well.
Much of the music we did was from earlier concerts, including the two vocal pieces we did in the fall. My stand partner hasn't been around when we've had a vocal soloist, so I let her know that we're pretty much tacet the whole time. There were a couple places where some of the other flutes had joined in (we cut down to one or two on a part for soloists), but it's like, what's the point? I'm not interested in playing 16 measures of a piece; I'd rather just sit there. The exception came when we did the second song, selections from The Music Man; I'd been asked to play during the split parts, as just one person on second flute couldn't be heard. I reprised that role. And, it wasn't just the female soloist; she'd assembled a barbershop quartet. That was pretty cool actually. They did a whole a cappella bit with "Lida Rose" in the middle, and one of the men stuck around to sing to "Marian" (the female vocalist) during "Marian the Librarian." The only issue, and shades of my college choir--they had gotten off key during "Lida Rose," so that when "Marian" and the band came back in, it took a couple notes to get everyone back on track. Oops. Thankfully they were better at the concert, plus they got a second shot at it. "Marian," bless her, had turned around to cue the director and the band as to when to come in following "Lida Rose," except nobody bothered to look at her. She was trying to get everyone's attention, too. I saw, and I said something about it. Oh, right, I'd said something after her first song--we messed up the ending of it, because she has her own a cappella measure in that, and the clarinets asked for another run-through of the last line to clean it up. The director said, but we played it at the concert! (Meaning we'd already performed it back in November and gotten through it then...you know, seven and a half months ago.) I interjected, yeah, and we messed it up then too! (They played through it one more time, and it was fine.) Yeah, I was being the peanut gallery again, but you know, sometimes you need it.
I don't think anything else stands out from Wednesday night. Thursday, the big day--I always get there early when we have cannons. It's the most popular concert of the summer. I don't even bother with trying to find parking in the adjacent lot; I get my car to the big parking deck by about 4 PM and just hang out in the park. I'm far from the only one there, and lots of people had already placed their chairs and blankets to stake out their spots. Two-Chairs-Down showed up with her own chair, and I helped her unfold it; it was a lounge chair of sorts. Her daughter hobbled over and I said, make sure she doesn't fall asleep! The daughter had hurt her foot several months ago and was fresh out of her boot--like, it came off that day--so she was still pretty stiff and moving slowly. She said she should've had it on still since she was walking long distances, but for whatever reason it wasn't with her.
There was an alumni band performing before us, at 6 o'clock. This was for the district where AD2 teaches, and she was directing this band. No programs, so I handwrote their music on a piece of paper. A few members of our band were helping out--our second oboe player (she was the only oboe in the alumni band, and there were solos), the male tenor sax player, a couple percussionists, AD2's husband. Friends and family of alums were welcome to join in. I also think I recognized someone in the flute section, which was cool, especially because I thought she had moved out of the country and her family no longer lived in the area. Alas, I didn't get the chance to see her afterward. Because they were performing, we couldn't get onto the stage until 6:45, and at that point I pretty much went straight downstairs to the bathroom to freshen up and get changed, and by the time that was done, all the alums were gone. Also, I was off in my own little world. The French horn section leader's older daughter is one of our sound people; she's in middle school or possibly starting high school. Anyway, she was there and washing her hands while I was at the sink, and she was talking to me, and I seriously didn't think she was talking to me. She wears a headset like the other audio people and I legit thought she was talking into it. (She was like, my microphone isn't flipped down...yeah, I wasn't paying attention.) I did apologize to her. I'm hoping I remember to say something at this next concert, too. I could blame it on getting too much sun, except I was wearing a hat.
...And because there wasn't much sun past a certain point. It was definitely sunny when I got there, but it started clouding over by 6. Like, I kept looking to my right (west) and those clouds did *not* look good. Sure enough, soon after I got inside and was putting my stuff behind the setup, I looked out the side window and saw flashes. Lightning. Great. The door was closed by then so we couldn't tell what was happening, but the director got on the PA system and made an announcement that there was a storm west of us and it would be here in about 20 minutes, so we might postpone the start of the show. Oh, dear. The Eb clarinet player said she had a friend and her kid in the audience, and the friend hadn't parked close by, so the Eb player handed the friend her keys and said, go in my car, turn on the DVD player, and be safe!
As it turned out, the storms skirted us, and not only did we start on time, but we got everything in. Everything. Cannons and all. I did see lightning in the sky, but apparently nobody was bothered by it, and I don't know that it rained, so okay. Now, I did get my own special scare before the concert. I was thrown off by the late start, and getting changed late, and putting my stuff away late (part of why I was a bubblehead to the sound girl), so that when the piccolo player said to me, he wants two piccolos, as I was walking back to my seat after stashing my flute bag, I was like, what are you talking about? She said, the Sousa, he wants two piccolos. ...We're doing the Sousa?! Great! Sure enough, the director had a revised copy of the concert itinerary on his stand, and at the very bottom was added S&SF, with the note "brass and pic up front!" Goody. Good thing I'm already playing piccolo on this concert, so I already had it out. And, since the local TV crew was there, we also had to make sure we stood in the right place so they could see us. We usually go all the way to the front of the stage, but the light doesn't hit our faces so we can't be seen. We made sure to stand farther back this time around. Anyway, we had our piccolo duet, and my gosh do we not play in tune at the start of that. That's more on me than her, since she's been playing and I haven't by that point (I played the previous song, a march, but mostly down an octave until the end; that was my chance to warm up), but still. It's so bad. The rest of it is mostly a split part and it comes out okay, but we just can never play that beginning part in tune. I guess we're giving it that authentic fife sound, maybe? Maybe? But there was a cute moment toward the end. The cannoneers dress the part, and are both northern and southern, so at the very end of the song (a Civil War medley) they had one Union guy and one Confederate guy come on stage, meet in the middle, and shake hands. The crowd loved it. We did 1812 right after that, then one last march, and finally the encore. The piccolo player had been all, you'll be fine! Yeah, I know, and part of me figured this would happen and I did in fact practice it last week, but still. Had I known I'd be playing a total of four songs on piccolo this week, I'd have moved up into the front row. It all worked out okay, but logistically it wasn't that great. Oh well. We made it through. And we get to do S&SF again this week, which I knew because it was scheduled, but you can't have Fourth of July without it.