Fancy Band: Whatever Lola Wants...
(Hi. I'm Lola.)
Thursday night was our last rehearsal of the season. That's why it was kind of a bummer that so many people were gone. It's spring break time, so a number of people were out for that; there was the winter guard national championships in Dayton; and flute D was at some sort of speech/debate competition. Ah, we were wondering why there were only 6 chairs in the front row.
Oh, gosh, we had a sort of quotable band situation Thursday night. This was regarding the winter guard situation.
*Dr. K discussing why band is kind of empty and brings up Dayton*
Dr. K: Dayton produces a lot of great band directors!
Clarinet player: What, are you from Dayton?
Me: How can you tell?
Me, to Dr. K: It's the big D on your shirt. ...Followed by the OH. D'oh!
Dr. K: She tried, folks.
Me: Still funnier than your jokes.
The group as a whole was in kind of an interesting mood, maybe a little looser than usual. We had some funny moments, whether on purpose or not. We worked on the gospel song for the first time in several weeks, because we needed to, and our soprano sax soloist, A (AKA the blonde sax player), was off.
Dr. K: *To E, the second chair sax player* Do you have cues? Would you mind playing that while she's gone?
E: Actually, I have a soprano right here... *opens case to reveal a second sax inside--it's a double case*
Random band member: You know he's been waiting for this moment!
Band: *cracks up*
The thing about E is that he's a talented sax player, so he was able to jump in and play it like he's been doing it all along. Seriously, you wouldn't know it was the first time he'd ever played it with us. I'm guessing he's been working on it all along; that's something I would do, just in case. That was awesome, and considering he's the guy who'd also gone to camp with me, I'm proud that he did so well.
(I could've even brought that up to him after rehearsal, because when we were cleaning up after band, he was standing near my stuff, but he was talking with one of the clarinet players and it would've been awkward so it didn't happen. But one of these days perhaps I'll show him my pencil, which has Mr. C's name on it, and ask if that means anything to him.)
It turned out he wasn't the only sub in the band, though E won't be subbing on that part for the concert. M, the tuba/string bass player, cannot make the concert. He was there at the rehearsal, but he showed up a little late, and in the meantime there was this other guy who brought in a bass. Wait, what's this about? Given that M had a difficult time playing his solo in the symphony, I wondered if it was related to that. Apparently not, and M was fully aware that the other guy was there, and even took him out in the hall to discuss the music with him. (There's no string bass on the gospel song, so the guy was just sitting there for a bit.)
For being off it for a few weeks, the gospel song went really well. We've clearly been working on it independently, and while some entrances were a little rough, overall we were pretty cohesive. Dr. K actually stopped the flutes after our soloistic section and complimented us on being as cohesive as he's ever heard us. Cool. That was in the first movement; the second is the one where we have to stand. We did rehearse it sitting down the first time through, where Dr. K put on the metronome and tested us periodically to see how well we were keeping up with the tempo; we were pretty much spot on, which was great. But the thing about music stands--there was a ceremony going on in the concert hall, and nobody could access anything in there until after 6:30. That means the extra stands we borrow from there were off-limits. L the younger and I ended up sharing a stand during the first part of rehearsal. She's a doll; she said I could put the stand wherever I needed to and she'd make it work. Yeah...I need it to be relatively high for when we get up. It wasn't ideal, but it worked well enough, and once we finished she was able to go and grab a stand for herself.
(She'd also had her junior recital last Saturday. There was a pep band performance at the same time so she said a lot of her peers weren't able to come, but B showed up! L was very excited about that. B even came over and discussed the pieces, including one she hadn't heard of before but really enjoyed. Oh, that's awesome. I'm sorry I couldn't be there but I'm just so exhausted by the weekend that I have no energy right now. I'm glad it went well, though.)
Early on, I think Dr. K had a moment of not-great conducting and he went, here, let me reset myself. He stepped off the podium, kind of turned in a circle, and stepped back on. Then he went, you know what I just did? It's something my cat does. He'll be all "rawr!" then turn himself in a circle and he's back to normal. ...OMG. That's hilarious. That was one of the moments where the band was highly amused and loose.
We did work on the chorale, where we need to make sure we're not blasting as the whole point of it is dynamic change, and we need to make sure the pianos are soft and only the fortes are loud. There was also a note during a woodwind-only section that was really out of tune to what the first flutes were playing, but on a second run-through it was fine. We did not get to the march or the patriotic song; the rest of the night was devoted to the symphony.
We did spot-check a few places to work on timing and such, though with some people, like the harpist, missing that made things a bit unusual. Dr. K ended up having to sing the harp part for a couple bars in one section because it's a bunch of soloistic stuff and the harp starts it off. The first few places we started happened to be alto flute solo parts, so I said to M, must be you! Truthfully, he's super talented and rarely causes an issue.
...And then there's me. So, last week, we'd done the flute chorale section of the symphony, and Dr. K was doing something weird where he stopped conducting us and started conducting the clarinets, as this is what we've termed the baby-crying section; he's cuing them in but not cuing us out, if that makes sense. We'd talked last week about it but it ended up not getting resolved, so when we did it this week, he was doing the same weird thing. Like, can you conduct the way you'd been conducting all along up until last week? Just conduct us. I don't know why you changed. He was like, we went over this last week, and you said you wanted it this way... Uh, no, I did not. Weirdly, L seemed to back him up, so something was not clear about what had been discussed. Like, I just want you to conduct a regular old 4-pattern while we play. It shouldn't be so hard. It got a little contentious for a minute there. Ultimately he did conduct the 4-pattern, then gave the cue to the clarinets, and it all worked out fine. After rehearsal, I did apologize to him.
Me: I don't mean to come across as antagonistic.
Dr. K: I know, and it doesn't really matter how I conduct it; I don't care either way.
(I'm trying to remember if he said, it'll just be whatever you tell me to do anyway; it may have been implied.)
M: Whatever [Lola] wants.
Me: Yeah, pretty much.
(M did say my real name.)
...What can I say. It has to make sense to me, and it's irritating when he changes how he's been doing things for weeks. I'm not the only person like that; I'm just the most vocal. He did admit that perhaps he misunderstood what I'd been trying to say last week, especially since I was so adamant this week about the situation. Whatever. It's back to how it was, which means what he's conducting is easy for everyone to follow. That's what I really want.
At least the rehearsal seemed to go pretty well overall, and we did a full run-through of the symphony, and it's nice that we did get a second concert cycle in which to work on it. This isn't a piece you can cram into 7 or so weeks, honestly. I mean, we pulled it off for the last concert, but we've gotten more nuances and tweaked it a bit more with the extra time.
We did knock off a few minutes early, which was fine by everyone. I packed myself up and used the bathroom, and Dr. K was busy talking with a band member. There was still a bunch of stuff out in the hallway, so I interrupted them (someone else had done so first, at least) and asked where it all needed to go. The full stand racks needed to go back onstage, and a couple NCC guys ended up helping out--except the stage door was locked and one of them had to grab Dr. K to get his key. Another decided to go down the side hallway to see if he could get in that way; no. Dr. K unlocks the door and I start rolling the one rack in, but I hear someone playing clarinet. Oh, crap, what am I interrupting? And the guys were all talking kind of loudly. Hey, quiet, something's going on. I think it was just a kid rehearsing, as a little later someone would ask Dr. K if he had access to a particular piano. Before that, though, trombone players P and D were busy packing up some of the audio equipment from the band room, and Dr. K and I were holding the band room doors open for them and talking. P was funny, saying, you know, there's a table in here that sometimes I see elsewhere and sometimes I see in here...I *could* move it, or I could just leave it... Dr. K went, I saw nothing. (And he was standing at the one door where he was facing the other direction, so it wasn't a lie, heh.) I went, I don't work here; I don't know what's supposed to go where. Shortly after that was when the random college student came by to ask about the piano, and Dr. K left with him; I said goodbye and didn't see him again after that.
Meanwhile, P and D had left their trombones out in the band room while they cleaned up the room; their cases were out in the hallway. We were finishing up in there along with M the NCC tuba player, whom I've been acquainted with for a few years. M started shutting the lights off so I was like, I guess we need to get out of here! But as we walked out the doors, D started playing something on his bass trombone.
Me: *sings beginning of "Closing Time"*
D: *playing*
P: You need to not do that!
Me: Me singing or D playing?
P: D playing.
Turned out D was playing a particular concerto, but down an octave since he was on bass, as in purposely playing it as low as he could. Then P started playing it on *his* trombone, and we had dueling trombones out in the hallway. M and I kept giving each other these bemused looks, in part because the guys were blocking the exit, heh. But they were really good, too! Like, this was not a simple solo; there was a lot of technicality required for it, and they were playing it completely memorized and completely in sync. I was impressed. When they finally stopped, I looked at M and went, the diagnosis is, they're musicians, and it's terminal. M concurred. P and D kept going for a bit, meaning we still couldn't leave, and M wondered if Dr. K was still there. It looked like his office door was open so we walked down the hall. Well, the light was on but nobody was home. I did actually say it, and it was legitimate; it wasn't a dig on anyone, amusingly enough. I'm guessing Dr. K was probably still dealing with the piano situation because there's no way he could've walked past us while we were in the hall. Eventually the boys stopped playing and I was able to get around them while they put their trombones away. M was impressed because they'd just had a three-hour rehearsal, had a college band rehearsal for a couple hours earlier in the day, and likely had been in a practice room too; how they had the stamina and chops to play more, we didn't know.
And P earlier had been talking about not having eaten. Dude, get food. It was snowing outside and P was concerned about the Door Dash driver who'd likely have to come. That led to a whole discussion about college meal plans and such, hoo boy. That wasn't anything I'd had to worry about since I never lived on campus, but even back in the day the meal plans were a concern for my resident friends. Long story short, the college doesn't want to students to use their meal plans anywhere except the dining hall, even though there's the Cage in the activities building (the little restaurant that's been there since my time) as well as Au Bon Pain (AKA ABP), which has been there for a few years and is in one of the science buildings. This doesn't even count the Boilerhouse Café, which must be cash or bonus bucks only--I'm guessing this is a debit account on their meal cards. (We had flexi-dollars though I never used them. You could swipe your ID and the food at the Cage was tax-free and possibly a little discounted, compared to paying in US dollars.) It was sort of random to discuss that situation with them, but it was still interesting as an alum to hear some of what current students are dealing with.
Thursday night was our last rehearsal of the season. That's why it was kind of a bummer that so many people were gone. It's spring break time, so a number of people were out for that; there was the winter guard national championships in Dayton; and flute D was at some sort of speech/debate competition. Ah, we were wondering why there were only 6 chairs in the front row.
Oh, gosh, we had a sort of quotable band situation Thursday night. This was regarding the winter guard situation.
*Dr. K discussing why band is kind of empty and brings up Dayton*
Dr. K: Dayton produces a lot of great band directors!
Clarinet player: What, are you from Dayton?
Me: How can you tell?
Me, to Dr. K: It's the big D on your shirt. ...Followed by the OH. D'oh!
Dr. K: She tried, folks.
Me: Still funnier than your jokes.
The group as a whole was in kind of an interesting mood, maybe a little looser than usual. We had some funny moments, whether on purpose or not. We worked on the gospel song for the first time in several weeks, because we needed to, and our soprano sax soloist, A (AKA the blonde sax player), was off.
Dr. K: *To E, the second chair sax player* Do you have cues? Would you mind playing that while she's gone?
E: Actually, I have a soprano right here... *opens case to reveal a second sax inside--it's a double case*
Random band member: You know he's been waiting for this moment!
Band: *cracks up*
The thing about E is that he's a talented sax player, so he was able to jump in and play it like he's been doing it all along. Seriously, you wouldn't know it was the first time he'd ever played it with us. I'm guessing he's been working on it all along; that's something I would do, just in case. That was awesome, and considering he's the guy who'd also gone to camp with me, I'm proud that he did so well.
(I could've even brought that up to him after rehearsal, because when we were cleaning up after band, he was standing near my stuff, but he was talking with one of the clarinet players and it would've been awkward so it didn't happen. But one of these days perhaps I'll show him my pencil, which has Mr. C's name on it, and ask if that means anything to him.)
It turned out he wasn't the only sub in the band, though E won't be subbing on that part for the concert. M, the tuba/string bass player, cannot make the concert. He was there at the rehearsal, but he showed up a little late, and in the meantime there was this other guy who brought in a bass. Wait, what's this about? Given that M had a difficult time playing his solo in the symphony, I wondered if it was related to that. Apparently not, and M was fully aware that the other guy was there, and even took him out in the hall to discuss the music with him. (There's no string bass on the gospel song, so the guy was just sitting there for a bit.)
For being off it for a few weeks, the gospel song went really well. We've clearly been working on it independently, and while some entrances were a little rough, overall we were pretty cohesive. Dr. K actually stopped the flutes after our soloistic section and complimented us on being as cohesive as he's ever heard us. Cool. That was in the first movement; the second is the one where we have to stand. We did rehearse it sitting down the first time through, where Dr. K put on the metronome and tested us periodically to see how well we were keeping up with the tempo; we were pretty much spot on, which was great. But the thing about music stands--there was a ceremony going on in the concert hall, and nobody could access anything in there until after 6:30. That means the extra stands we borrow from there were off-limits. L the younger and I ended up sharing a stand during the first part of rehearsal. She's a doll; she said I could put the stand wherever I needed to and she'd make it work. Yeah...I need it to be relatively high for when we get up. It wasn't ideal, but it worked well enough, and once we finished she was able to go and grab a stand for herself.
(She'd also had her junior recital last Saturday. There was a pep band performance at the same time so she said a lot of her peers weren't able to come, but B showed up! L was very excited about that. B even came over and discussed the pieces, including one she hadn't heard of before but really enjoyed. Oh, that's awesome. I'm sorry I couldn't be there but I'm just so exhausted by the weekend that I have no energy right now. I'm glad it went well, though.)
Early on, I think Dr. K had a moment of not-great conducting and he went, here, let me reset myself. He stepped off the podium, kind of turned in a circle, and stepped back on. Then he went, you know what I just did? It's something my cat does. He'll be all "rawr!" then turn himself in a circle and he's back to normal. ...OMG. That's hilarious. That was one of the moments where the band was highly amused and loose.
We did work on the chorale, where we need to make sure we're not blasting as the whole point of it is dynamic change, and we need to make sure the pianos are soft and only the fortes are loud. There was also a note during a woodwind-only section that was really out of tune to what the first flutes were playing, but on a second run-through it was fine. We did not get to the march or the patriotic song; the rest of the night was devoted to the symphony.
We did spot-check a few places to work on timing and such, though with some people, like the harpist, missing that made things a bit unusual. Dr. K ended up having to sing the harp part for a couple bars in one section because it's a bunch of soloistic stuff and the harp starts it off. The first few places we started happened to be alto flute solo parts, so I said to M, must be you! Truthfully, he's super talented and rarely causes an issue.
...And then there's me. So, last week, we'd done the flute chorale section of the symphony, and Dr. K was doing something weird where he stopped conducting us and started conducting the clarinets, as this is what we've termed the baby-crying section; he's cuing them in but not cuing us out, if that makes sense. We'd talked last week about it but it ended up not getting resolved, so when we did it this week, he was doing the same weird thing. Like, can you conduct the way you'd been conducting all along up until last week? Just conduct us. I don't know why you changed. He was like, we went over this last week, and you said you wanted it this way... Uh, no, I did not. Weirdly, L seemed to back him up, so something was not clear about what had been discussed. Like, I just want you to conduct a regular old 4-pattern while we play. It shouldn't be so hard. It got a little contentious for a minute there. Ultimately he did conduct the 4-pattern, then gave the cue to the clarinets, and it all worked out fine. After rehearsal, I did apologize to him.
Me: I don't mean to come across as antagonistic.
Dr. K: I know, and it doesn't really matter how I conduct it; I don't care either way.
(I'm trying to remember if he said, it'll just be whatever you tell me to do anyway; it may have been implied.)
M: Whatever [Lola] wants.
Me: Yeah, pretty much.
(M did say my real name.)
...What can I say. It has to make sense to me, and it's irritating when he changes how he's been doing things for weeks. I'm not the only person like that; I'm just the most vocal. He did admit that perhaps he misunderstood what I'd been trying to say last week, especially since I was so adamant this week about the situation. Whatever. It's back to how it was, which means what he's conducting is easy for everyone to follow. That's what I really want.
At least the rehearsal seemed to go pretty well overall, and we did a full run-through of the symphony, and it's nice that we did get a second concert cycle in which to work on it. This isn't a piece you can cram into 7 or so weeks, honestly. I mean, we pulled it off for the last concert, but we've gotten more nuances and tweaked it a bit more with the extra time.
We did knock off a few minutes early, which was fine by everyone. I packed myself up and used the bathroom, and Dr. K was busy talking with a band member. There was still a bunch of stuff out in the hallway, so I interrupted them (someone else had done so first, at least) and asked where it all needed to go. The full stand racks needed to go back onstage, and a couple NCC guys ended up helping out--except the stage door was locked and one of them had to grab Dr. K to get his key. Another decided to go down the side hallway to see if he could get in that way; no. Dr. K unlocks the door and I start rolling the one rack in, but I hear someone playing clarinet. Oh, crap, what am I interrupting? And the guys were all talking kind of loudly. Hey, quiet, something's going on. I think it was just a kid rehearsing, as a little later someone would ask Dr. K if he had access to a particular piano. Before that, though, trombone players P and D were busy packing up some of the audio equipment from the band room, and Dr. K and I were holding the band room doors open for them and talking. P was funny, saying, you know, there's a table in here that sometimes I see elsewhere and sometimes I see in here...I *could* move it, or I could just leave it... Dr. K went, I saw nothing. (And he was standing at the one door where he was facing the other direction, so it wasn't a lie, heh.) I went, I don't work here; I don't know what's supposed to go where. Shortly after that was when the random college student came by to ask about the piano, and Dr. K left with him; I said goodbye and didn't see him again after that.
Meanwhile, P and D had left their trombones out in the band room while they cleaned up the room; their cases were out in the hallway. We were finishing up in there along with M the NCC tuba player, whom I've been acquainted with for a few years. M started shutting the lights off so I was like, I guess we need to get out of here! But as we walked out the doors, D started playing something on his bass trombone.
Me: *sings beginning of "Closing Time"*
D: *playing*
P: You need to not do that!
Me: Me singing or D playing?
P: D playing.
Turned out D was playing a particular concerto, but down an octave since he was on bass, as in purposely playing it as low as he could. Then P started playing it on *his* trombone, and we had dueling trombones out in the hallway. M and I kept giving each other these bemused looks, in part because the guys were blocking the exit, heh. But they were really good, too! Like, this was not a simple solo; there was a lot of technicality required for it, and they were playing it completely memorized and completely in sync. I was impressed. When they finally stopped, I looked at M and went, the diagnosis is, they're musicians, and it's terminal. M concurred. P and D kept going for a bit, meaning we still couldn't leave, and M wondered if Dr. K was still there. It looked like his office door was open so we walked down the hall. Well, the light was on but nobody was home. I did actually say it, and it was legitimate; it wasn't a dig on anyone, amusingly enough. I'm guessing Dr. K was probably still dealing with the piano situation because there's no way he could've walked past us while we were in the hall. Eventually the boys stopped playing and I was able to get around them while they put their trombones away. M was impressed because they'd just had a three-hour rehearsal, had a college band rehearsal for a couple hours earlier in the day, and likely had been in a practice room too; how they had the stamina and chops to play more, we didn't know.
And P earlier had been talking about not having eaten. Dude, get food. It was snowing outside and P was concerned about the Door Dash driver who'd likely have to come. That led to a whole discussion about college meal plans and such, hoo boy. That wasn't anything I'd had to worry about since I never lived on campus, but even back in the day the meal plans were a concern for my resident friends. Long story short, the college doesn't want to students to use their meal plans anywhere except the dining hall, even though there's the Cage in the activities building (the little restaurant that's been there since my time) as well as Au Bon Pain (AKA ABP), which has been there for a few years and is in one of the science buildings. This doesn't even count the Boilerhouse Café, which must be cash or bonus bucks only--I'm guessing this is a debit account on their meal cards. (We had flexi-dollars though I never used them. You could swipe your ID and the food at the Cage was tax-free and possibly a little discounted, compared to paying in US dollars.) It was sort of random to discuss that situation with them, but it was still interesting as an alum to hear some of what current students are dealing with.