CDs, Rehearsals and Pats, oh my!
Well, ok, I actually have a lot more than that, but the subject had the right rhythm. This is actually going to be a fairly long update of stuff. I'll hide it behind cuts for brevity on friends' pages.
Friday night, Monique was coming home from a few days in MN and she was due to pass through North Haven (where I work) about the same time I get out. So I asked her to go out to dinner. She was thrilled with this idea (at the time it was suggested). And we needed to discuss several things and try to get her into the right frame of mind to be talking to Chris.
Chris had just lost his job that morning and I figured I'd try to run a little interference for him to put Monique in a more positive frame of mind. Chris had already gone and picked up an application at another print shop and he'd written a rough draft of a resume. He's being proactive (*shock*) and trying to fix the mess he's made. This is an enormous step for him and I don't want anything squashing it.
Anyway, I got to the restaurant and waited for over an hour and a half. Monique was caught in really bad traffic north of Hartford. This did *not* help her mood. We sat and talked for a good long time though and she was feeling a lot better by the end. I even volunteered to take her car home and stop and gas it up for her so she wouldn't have to.
We got home just before one of her sisters (Nicole) from VA got their. Nicole's mother-in-law, Connie, was going to be having surgery for a broken ankle. Connie was staying with her son in CT and Nicole and her husband were coming up to see her for the weekend. They asked if they could stay with us. So we stayed up far too late Friday night talking.
Oh yeah, and I came home to a message from one of my CT Silver Village Flute Choir (SVFC) members. Things had taken a really bad turn with her mom and she was going up to spend the weekend and thus was going to miss our performance on Sunday. I paniced. We were already down to bare bones for covering parts on half the pieces. So I frantically pulled all the scores and analyzed the parts. Sure enough, half the program would have to be scrapped, so I put out an SOS email to the group to see if any of them knew anyone who could cover all Penny's flute and piccolo parts in a performance.
Why would it be too late on a Friday, you ask? I had a rehearsal in Concord MA with Kat. She and I are going to do some flute and violin duets next weekend. So I was on a timeline getting up Saturday morning.
Rehearsal with Kat went really well. We're doing 5 or 6 pieces. With the exception of Fum, Fum, Fum, we didn't even really have to rehearse much. They just sort of worked out nicely.
Just before leaving Kat's, I got a phone call from Georgette, one of my SVFC members called me on my cell to let me know that one of her students would be available to play Sunday. Fortunately, I'd heard this student play at a recital. She has the most amazing piccolo sound I've ever heard and technically was very good, so I was feeling a little less stress about Sunday's performance. I promised Georgette I'd scan all the parts and email them to Becca when I got home that night.
Then I drove up to Nashua, NH to see my friend Linda and her husband Donald. Ok, the ulterior motive was actually to pick up 50 of the Nashua Flute Choir's new Christmas CD, but it was really nice to sit and visit with them. I don't do that nearly as often as I'd like. Linda was one of my co-founders of the Nashua Flute Choir 25 years ago and she and I have been to Hell and back together getting the NFC off the ground. As a special surprise, my friend Marje was there. She played with me for years in the NFC.
As to the CDs themselves, this is the 3rd CD the group releases, its 2nd Christmas CD. I've listened to it a couple of times now. Technically, it's way beyond the first Christmas CD we released back when I was playing with the group. Of course, it's also pretty neat that it includes 3 of my works. It utilizes their spiffy, new contrabass flute which adds some amazing depth. Couple minor gripes, the recording sort of has a hiss whenever they overmiked the lower instruments on solos. In fact, the drums on the African Noel were overmiked as well. And while the African Noel is a bright, upbeat, novelty piece, the unanimous opinion of the 6 people in the house who heard it was that it was probably not the best piece to start with. Overall, though, it's a beautful CD.
So, from Nashua to Bolton, MA for the second rehearsal with the Christmas party choir I spoke of a couple weeks ago. This group has made some great strides. One person in particular,
spnickles, who has never sung with a choir before, has become an anchor to my somewhat green tenor section. He's obviously put in a lot of hard work and I was really impressed.
Four of the women are going to do an arrangement I did for them of 'O Holy Night' with flute and violin. We rehearsed that for almost an hour after the regular rehearsal. They are amazing. They have a great blend and sound spectacular.
The only thing scaring me is one particular party attendee. I don't worry what she'll think of the group's performance. They're going to do a great job for a group that's only worked together twice and with a high percentage of non-choral singers. I worry about the peer judgment on me. I respect this individual greatly and her opinion matters a great deal to me. I think this will be the first performance in a long time where *I* am nervous. *gulp*
I got home about 8:30 and immediately went to scan that music I talked about earlier. My scanner wasn't working. I spent a half hour getting it back up and running and then an hour and a half scanning, putting it up in a pdf file and putting it up on the web site for Becca to download. I even put it up in program order so she wouldn't have to sort it, and I'd have one less worry.
Sunday morning, I went off to New Haven for the SVFC to play at the Ronald McDonald House Trees of Hope program. Everyone was there and ready to play in a timely fashion (except for me). I stopped to pick up candy canes for Rudolph and Frosty to give out to the kids. Chris' girlfriend Amy came with me and wore my Rudolph costume. Georgette's son wore my Frosty the Snowman costume. The group did a great job. It's a really hard hall to play in because it's so live. It sounds great, but the sound bounces so long that without a conductor, it's hard to stay together. My right shoulder is sore today from the motion of conducting with the end of the bass flute. The sound was good. The intonation was good. Becca did a phenomenal job filling it. It was just a great performance for us.
I got home and watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with Amy and Chris. She had never seen it and thus was missing the quotes that Chris and I do from it. I decided I needed to fix this deficiency in her education. It was weird. I've been watching this show since I was a little kid. There was a song in the middle neither Chris nor I had ever heard before. It must have been restored.
Then I went upstairs to work on the database for Monique for a couple of hours before the game. I laid down for two minutes just to rest and woke up two hours later. So much for the database. I must be getting old. *sigh*
There was a real downer to the weekend. Penny, the SVFC member that called out on our performance so she could go see her mother? Yeah, her mother died on Saturday. It's a good thing she skipped our performance. It proves out the philosophy I tell all my ensemble players all the time, real life is more important than rehearsals and performances. Hey, if any of you LARPers out there are reading this, this pertains to LARPs too. They're only a game. Life is more important than them, too.
We ate dinner over the Pats game. Woo-hoo! Now that's what I like to see. I'm not sure if I could have taken another of those hair raising, fingernail biting games like the last two. It was good to have the old Pats back, especially in the second half. That brings us to 13-0 with a fine looking shot at a 16-0 season.
All in all, a busy, occasionally harried, but really good weekend.
Friday night, Monique was coming home from a few days in MN and she was due to pass through North Haven (where I work) about the same time I get out. So I asked her to go out to dinner. She was thrilled with this idea (at the time it was suggested). And we needed to discuss several things and try to get her into the right frame of mind to be talking to Chris.
Chris had just lost his job that morning and I figured I'd try to run a little interference for him to put Monique in a more positive frame of mind. Chris had already gone and picked up an application at another print shop and he'd written a rough draft of a resume. He's being proactive (*shock*) and trying to fix the mess he's made. This is an enormous step for him and I don't want anything squashing it.
Anyway, I got to the restaurant and waited for over an hour and a half. Monique was caught in really bad traffic north of Hartford. This did *not* help her mood. We sat and talked for a good long time though and she was feeling a lot better by the end. I even volunteered to take her car home and stop and gas it up for her so she wouldn't have to.
We got home just before one of her sisters (Nicole) from VA got their. Nicole's mother-in-law, Connie, was going to be having surgery for a broken ankle. Connie was staying with her son in CT and Nicole and her husband were coming up to see her for the weekend. They asked if they could stay with us. So we stayed up far too late Friday night talking.
Oh yeah, and I came home to a message from one of my CT Silver Village Flute Choir (SVFC) members. Things had taken a really bad turn with her mom and she was going up to spend the weekend and thus was going to miss our performance on Sunday. I paniced. We were already down to bare bones for covering parts on half the pieces. So I frantically pulled all the scores and analyzed the parts. Sure enough, half the program would have to be scrapped, so I put out an SOS email to the group to see if any of them knew anyone who could cover all Penny's flute and piccolo parts in a performance.
Why would it be too late on a Friday, you ask? I had a rehearsal in Concord MA with Kat. She and I are going to do some flute and violin duets next weekend. So I was on a timeline getting up Saturday morning.
Rehearsal with Kat went really well. We're doing 5 or 6 pieces. With the exception of Fum, Fum, Fum, we didn't even really have to rehearse much. They just sort of worked out nicely.
Just before leaving Kat's, I got a phone call from Georgette, one of my SVFC members called me on my cell to let me know that one of her students would be available to play Sunday. Fortunately, I'd heard this student play at a recital. She has the most amazing piccolo sound I've ever heard and technically was very good, so I was feeling a little less stress about Sunday's performance. I promised Georgette I'd scan all the parts and email them to Becca when I got home that night.
Then I drove up to Nashua, NH to see my friend Linda and her husband Donald. Ok, the ulterior motive was actually to pick up 50 of the Nashua Flute Choir's new Christmas CD, but it was really nice to sit and visit with them. I don't do that nearly as often as I'd like. Linda was one of my co-founders of the Nashua Flute Choir 25 years ago and she and I have been to Hell and back together getting the NFC off the ground. As a special surprise, my friend Marje was there. She played with me for years in the NFC.
As to the CDs themselves, this is the 3rd CD the group releases, its 2nd Christmas CD. I've listened to it a couple of times now. Technically, it's way beyond the first Christmas CD we released back when I was playing with the group. Of course, it's also pretty neat that it includes 3 of my works. It utilizes their spiffy, new contrabass flute which adds some amazing depth. Couple minor gripes, the recording sort of has a hiss whenever they overmiked the lower instruments on solos. In fact, the drums on the African Noel were overmiked as well. And while the African Noel is a bright, upbeat, novelty piece, the unanimous opinion of the 6 people in the house who heard it was that it was probably not the best piece to start with. Overall, though, it's a beautful CD.
So, from Nashua to Bolton, MA for the second rehearsal with the Christmas party choir I spoke of a couple weeks ago. This group has made some great strides. One person in particular,
spnickles, who has never sung with a choir before, has become an anchor to my somewhat green tenor section. He's obviously put in a lot of hard work and I was really impressed.
Four of the women are going to do an arrangement I did for them of 'O Holy Night' with flute and violin. We rehearsed that for almost an hour after the regular rehearsal. They are amazing. They have a great blend and sound spectacular.
The only thing scaring me is one particular party attendee. I don't worry what she'll think of the group's performance. They're going to do a great job for a group that's only worked together twice and with a high percentage of non-choral singers. I worry about the peer judgment on me. I respect this individual greatly and her opinion matters a great deal to me. I think this will be the first performance in a long time where *I* am nervous. *gulp*
I got home about 8:30 and immediately went to scan that music I talked about earlier. My scanner wasn't working. I spent a half hour getting it back up and running and then an hour and a half scanning, putting it up in a pdf file and putting it up on the web site for Becca to download. I even put it up in program order so she wouldn't have to sort it, and I'd have one less worry.
Sunday morning, I went off to New Haven for the SVFC to play at the Ronald McDonald House Trees of Hope program. Everyone was there and ready to play in a timely fashion (except for me). I stopped to pick up candy canes for Rudolph and Frosty to give out to the kids. Chris' girlfriend Amy came with me and wore my Rudolph costume. Georgette's son wore my Frosty the Snowman costume. The group did a great job. It's a really hard hall to play in because it's so live. It sounds great, but the sound bounces so long that without a conductor, it's hard to stay together. My right shoulder is sore today from the motion of conducting with the end of the bass flute. The sound was good. The intonation was good. Becca did a phenomenal job filling it. It was just a great performance for us.
I got home and watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with Amy and Chris. She had never seen it and thus was missing the quotes that Chris and I do from it. I decided I needed to fix this deficiency in her education. It was weird. I've been watching this show since I was a little kid. There was a song in the middle neither Chris nor I had ever heard before. It must have been restored.
Then I went upstairs to work on the database for Monique for a couple of hours before the game. I laid down for two minutes just to rest and woke up two hours later. So much for the database. I must be getting old. *sigh*
There was a real downer to the weekend. Penny, the SVFC member that called out on our performance so she could go see her mother? Yeah, her mother died on Saturday. It's a good thing she skipped our performance. It proves out the philosophy I tell all my ensemble players all the time, real life is more important than rehearsals and performances. Hey, if any of you LARPers out there are reading this, this pertains to LARPs too. They're only a game. Life is more important than them, too.
We ate dinner over the Pats game. Woo-hoo! Now that's what I like to see. I'm not sure if I could have taken another of those hair raising, fingernail biting games like the last two. It was good to have the old Pats back, especially in the second half. That brings us to 13-0 with a fine looking shot at a 16-0 season.
All in all, a busy, occasionally harried, but really good weekend.