Regular Band: Holiday music and the near-coup
Monday was a weird day; I will get to that soon enough. Having jury duty meant that I came to band from home. I'd contacted a few people to let them know what was up in case somehow I got waylaid. I wasn't expecting that to happen, though I would discover that could have been a possibility (and it made me VERY thankful I did not have duty on Thursday). There is a table in the lobby where AD2 likes to sit to greet everyone as they come in, and she was there with the band manager, both of whom had been emailed about my situation, so they were thankful to see me at my near-normal time. AD2 mentioned how she once had federal jury duty, like my coworker, except she'd been called to be on a grand jury, and that would have meant she'd need to report downtown every Tuesday for a year. As a high school band director, who was in the process of planning a trip to Europe for her students, this was not an ideal situation. Luckily that did not come to pass, but sheesh. I couldn't imagine taking all that on.
(There is a fun twist involving jury duty and band, but I will save that for my full-on jury duty post.)
I walked into the band room and talked to a few people about my Monday, and then I noticed this red shirt on my chair. My section leader is notorious for creating t-shirts, so I was like, what did you do... She then said, that's not for you; we have an extra clarinet player, meaning it was on the piccolo player's chair instead. Okay, phew. She'd made a t-shirt that said "devil's whistle" on it, with a picture of a piccolo, for the piccolo player. One of her grandkids had called the piccolo that, it got relayed to the section leader, and a shirt was born. The piccolo player thought it was hilarious and immediately put it on. She'd been wearing all black so it looked good. I'd noticed the lettering was fuzzy and joked that people would be trying to touch her chest; she hadn't even realized it and went, OMG! They're flocked! That made it more amusing.
A note about that extra clarinet player: We are back to having high school interns again, for the first time since before the pandemic. I believe there are six high school students sitting in with us, at least for this concert; I don't know if they'll be around past that point. I know there are two clarinets and no flutes. I think there's a trumpet player, alto sax player, euphonium player, and one more...maybe trombone?
We have three new songs this year, which is pretty unusual for the holiday concert, but it's a nice change of pace. We only have three rehearsals to put everything together so we focused on the newer stuff. ADB is doing a couple of those, and for one he cut the flutes down to just the top four players, which is fine, but the piece has two separate parts. When it got played, I only heard the one part and asked him about it when we were done. He let me know that he did pass out the second part to a couple people so it was covered. Okay, good. Not that I necessarily wanted to play it, but I should still hear it! Again, it's our first rehearsal on this music and they probably were just given the music, and otherwise those ladies are playing the first part, so they're having to toggle between the parts, which is not easy on a first read-through. It would've been easier for them to just be on second part all the way through, or to have given the soloistic bits to flutes 3-6 instead of 1-4, since ADB's whole point was to have the parts next to each other for blending purposes. (Flutes 1-4 are the ones on first part. There are 10 of us total, plus the piccolo player who'd play first if there's no picc part.)
AD2 must have been out in the hall when ADB finished one piece and the next one wasn't his to do. We'd finished three of the five pieces for the night and were ready to move on to two songs we did last year, including the piccolo duet. When AD2 didn't come into the room, ADB was all, well, might as well get out the piccolo duet piece! And then AD2 showed up and ADB had to go, well, since you weren't here... And she said, I have two minutes! Heh. Look at ADB, attempting to stage a coup to take over the band! I totally get where he was coming from, since if she wasn't there, there was no sense in letting the band just sit around twiddling thumbs. But these two have a schedule and they're pretty good with managing their time and not cutting into the other person's time. I guess ADB finished his previous piece a little early. Alas for him, he had to cede control of the band to the lead director.
At least her piece is one we've done a few times. This is a passacaglia--not to be confused with the one we just did for Fancy Band; it's a style or type of music--and it's based on an English carol. It's a really beautiful piece, especially if we play it well, and having performed it a couple times already means we have muscle memory and old notes from previous rehearsals we can read to jog our brains on how to play it. That also led to a funny moment. P the trumpet player cannot play the concert, so he's skipping the rehearsals, but he sent his son B to cover his part. B raises his hand and goes, so, my dad's music has "solo" written at measure [whatever]; does this mean I have a solo? AD2 had to break it to him that, no, not only is it not a solo, it's actually a trumpet soli for the whole section, so change that O to an I. B asked, can I play it extra loud? Sorry, dude. You have to blend. The whole exchange reminded me that B is *totally* his father's son. I didn't hear him standing out from what I can tell, so at least he didn't attempt his own coup in the trumpet section.
I was excited to see the piccolo duet again, though being the last piece of the night, and having played several songs that were flute only, it meant that the picc player and I both had to quickly warm up our piccolos before attempting the piece. I had hoped that as of November 1st, the city would turn off the air conditioning and turn on the heat in the building. All of a sudden, there was this cold wash of air into the room. This was around when ADB was attempting to stage his coup, and when AD2 entered and took the podium, I asked her, did you open the outside door? It turned out she was out at the table in the lobby saying goodnight to the elder adult band members who were leaving their rehearsal from the lower level. Ah, perhaps that is where the cold air came from. But it was cold enough that I put on my winter coat for the rest of rehearsal. Anyway, AD2 was conductor for the picc duet last year, but ADB took it over this year, and naturally he has his own thoughts and interpretation of what he wants--and it's exactly the opposite of how AD2 had us perform it. That's not confusing at all. This is the problem with muscle memory; once you've learned a piece a particular way, it's hard to unlearn it. AD2 had us playing the melody with a legato tongue; ADB wants it more separated. I'm going to have to really work on that. I'd also kind of missed his instructions and had to call him over to clarify things, which he did. As DB said, it's like it's a whole new piece to me! Great, haha.
We are off band next week for Thanksgiving, then have two more rehearsals until our concert. It sounds like we'll be doing more of the pieces at the next rehearsal, which is good. They're treating it as summer concert-like, which is fine. If we can't play some of these pieces by now, we should probably leave the band. It also helps that I'm doing double-duty on a couple of the songs. I'll be able to play A Christmas Festival in my sleep by the second week of December.
(There is a fun twist involving jury duty and band, but I will save that for my full-on jury duty post.)
I walked into the band room and talked to a few people about my Monday, and then I noticed this red shirt on my chair. My section leader is notorious for creating t-shirts, so I was like, what did you do... She then said, that's not for you; we have an extra clarinet player, meaning it was on the piccolo player's chair instead. Okay, phew. She'd made a t-shirt that said "devil's whistle" on it, with a picture of a piccolo, for the piccolo player. One of her grandkids had called the piccolo that, it got relayed to the section leader, and a shirt was born. The piccolo player thought it was hilarious and immediately put it on. She'd been wearing all black so it looked good. I'd noticed the lettering was fuzzy and joked that people would be trying to touch her chest; she hadn't even realized it and went, OMG! They're flocked! That made it more amusing.
A note about that extra clarinet player: We are back to having high school interns again, for the first time since before the pandemic. I believe there are six high school students sitting in with us, at least for this concert; I don't know if they'll be around past that point. I know there are two clarinets and no flutes. I think there's a trumpet player, alto sax player, euphonium player, and one more...maybe trombone?
We have three new songs this year, which is pretty unusual for the holiday concert, but it's a nice change of pace. We only have three rehearsals to put everything together so we focused on the newer stuff. ADB is doing a couple of those, and for one he cut the flutes down to just the top four players, which is fine, but the piece has two separate parts. When it got played, I only heard the one part and asked him about it when we were done. He let me know that he did pass out the second part to a couple people so it was covered. Okay, good. Not that I necessarily wanted to play it, but I should still hear it! Again, it's our first rehearsal on this music and they probably were just given the music, and otherwise those ladies are playing the first part, so they're having to toggle between the parts, which is not easy on a first read-through. It would've been easier for them to just be on second part all the way through, or to have given the soloistic bits to flutes 3-6 instead of 1-4, since ADB's whole point was to have the parts next to each other for blending purposes. (Flutes 1-4 are the ones on first part. There are 10 of us total, plus the piccolo player who'd play first if there's no picc part.)
AD2 must have been out in the hall when ADB finished one piece and the next one wasn't his to do. We'd finished three of the five pieces for the night and were ready to move on to two songs we did last year, including the piccolo duet. When AD2 didn't come into the room, ADB was all, well, might as well get out the piccolo duet piece! And then AD2 showed up and ADB had to go, well, since you weren't here... And she said, I have two minutes! Heh. Look at ADB, attempting to stage a coup to take over the band! I totally get where he was coming from, since if she wasn't there, there was no sense in letting the band just sit around twiddling thumbs. But these two have a schedule and they're pretty good with managing their time and not cutting into the other person's time. I guess ADB finished his previous piece a little early. Alas for him, he had to cede control of the band to the lead director.
At least her piece is one we've done a few times. This is a passacaglia--not to be confused with the one we just did for Fancy Band; it's a style or type of music--and it's based on an English carol. It's a really beautiful piece, especially if we play it well, and having performed it a couple times already means we have muscle memory and old notes from previous rehearsals we can read to jog our brains on how to play it. That also led to a funny moment. P the trumpet player cannot play the concert, so he's skipping the rehearsals, but he sent his son B to cover his part. B raises his hand and goes, so, my dad's music has "solo" written at measure [whatever]; does this mean I have a solo? AD2 had to break it to him that, no, not only is it not a solo, it's actually a trumpet soli for the whole section, so change that O to an I. B asked, can I play it extra loud? Sorry, dude. You have to blend. The whole exchange reminded me that B is *totally* his father's son. I didn't hear him standing out from what I can tell, so at least he didn't attempt his own coup in the trumpet section.
I was excited to see the piccolo duet again, though being the last piece of the night, and having played several songs that were flute only, it meant that the picc player and I both had to quickly warm up our piccolos before attempting the piece. I had hoped that as of November 1st, the city would turn off the air conditioning and turn on the heat in the building. All of a sudden, there was this cold wash of air into the room. This was around when ADB was attempting to stage his coup, and when AD2 entered and took the podium, I asked her, did you open the outside door? It turned out she was out at the table in the lobby saying goodnight to the elder adult band members who were leaving their rehearsal from the lower level. Ah, perhaps that is where the cold air came from. But it was cold enough that I put on my winter coat for the rest of rehearsal. Anyway, AD2 was conductor for the picc duet last year, but ADB took it over this year, and naturally he has his own thoughts and interpretation of what he wants--and it's exactly the opposite of how AD2 had us perform it. That's not confusing at all. This is the problem with muscle memory; once you've learned a piece a particular way, it's hard to unlearn it. AD2 had us playing the melody with a legato tongue; ADB wants it more separated. I'm going to have to really work on that. I'd also kind of missed his instructions and had to call him over to clarify things, which he did. As DB said, it's like it's a whole new piece to me! Great, haha.
We are off band next week for Thanksgiving, then have two more rehearsals until our concert. It sounds like we'll be doing more of the pieces at the next rehearsal, which is good. They're treating it as summer concert-like, which is fine. If we can't play some of these pieces by now, we should probably leave the band. It also helps that I'm doing double-duty on a couple of the songs. I'll be able to play A Christmas Festival in my sleep by the second week of December.