orchestra!au
Oilers circa 2012-as-orchestra!AU for My Real Life Scott McCall. It's not actually fic. More like a bunch of words barfed out about RNH side-eying everyone and...no plot.
and it goes on (and on and on and on)
Ryan’s not even sure how he finds himself in these situations: it's not even the first official rehearsal of the season; it's an optional rehearsal, for crying out loud, and their new conductor's handing out the perspective program for the first quarter, and already, there's a chorus of groans -
"Benjamin Britten? Britten?" Khabi spits out in disgust, glaring at the sheet in his hand. "That shit's for amateurs."
"The director requires a family-friendly component this season, I'm afraid," Ryan "Call-me-Smytty" Smyth says somewhat apologetically, already flustered at the daunting task of being a rookie conductor and having to handpick the program pieces. "It was either Young Person's Guide or Peter and the Wolf, and they didn’t want to hire a narrator. My hands are tied, folks."
"At least Prokoviev is Russian," Khabi mutters darkly.
"I would prefer Peter," Hemsky the oboist chimes in solemnly from beside Ryan. "I only don't hate all of you when I get to be the duck. I like the duck."
"Hemmer, you play the fucking oboe," Ladi says cheerfully, fitting his flute together. "You always sound like the fucking duck! Plus, we are doing Symphonie Fantastique, too: you have the fucking solo in the third movement as the fucking shepherd instead!"
Somehow, Ladi manages to completely miss the evil-eye that Hemsky is very obviously sending his way.
(Personally, Ryan kind of agrees with Khabi’s assessment of Britten, but he’s going to keep his trap shut, just in case rebellion gets him sent back to his junior orchestra in Red Deer. But he’s actually super excited about Symphonie Fantastique: Hector Berlioz is his favourite, and that fifth movement is his jam.)
"And what the fuck, Eine Kleine?” Khabi presses on angrily. "What is this? High school?! Who the fuck came up with this program?"
"It is kind of all over the place," Horc, the second chair violinist agrees from his spot sprawled out across two of the audience chairs - apparently veteran presence in this orchestra equates a lack of need for professionalism during meetings. “Which might be, you know. Sort of hard if we’re still searching for a concrete identity. Hey, I know: let’s try something completely new - Carl Czerny, anyone? Moreau would have said 'yes.'”
Nobody pauses to dignify Horc’s attempt at lightening the moment (or at least, Ryan hopes he was kidding - from what he understands, Moreau was the last conductor; he sincerely hopes that Moreau would not have put Czerny into a program: who does that?) with a response. Khabi just steamrolls on, undeterred: “You,” he says, pointing at Smytty. “You are racist against people who play timpani.”
“Uh, Khabi?” Horc says, swooping to the defence of the flabbergasted and speechless conductor. “Timpanist isn’t a race.”
“Racist against percussionists,” Khabi says firmly, and looks around for support from his fellow percussionists, and finds none when Maggie, Anton and Linus are all sitting in the back row of the audience, clearly involved in a heated discussion about who gets to crack the literal whip during percussion variation of the Britten piece. For fear of laughing at his older peer’s clear outrage, Ryan tries not to think back to the time last season when Jonsey the tuba player was giving him a quick introduction to their orchestra and had referred to the percussion section as “Stalin and the Swedish House Mafia” - it had kind of stuck.
"I like Eine Kleine," Taylor volunteers brightly from where he's lying at stage left with his head in the cellist's lap.
"Me too," Jordan agrees, one hand fondly petting through Taylor's hair and the other one twirling his cello bow. Ryan fights the urge to roll his eyes.
(Ryan first met Taylor at the beginning of the previous season when Taylor took him out for dinner - Ryan later finds out that it was mostly a misguided attempt by upper management to get their new wonder kids to bond. For the most part, Ryan's just slightly nervous about getting the chance to be part of a professional orchestra, but also feeling pretty grouchy that he's got to have dinner with a total dudebro of an apparent viola prodigy - who the fuck plays the viola, anyway? Dinner was actually pretty awkward, until Taylor had asked Ryan what he did in his downtime; Ryan had debated making something up, but in the end, went with the truth. He wasn’t entirely sure what reaction he was expecting when he told Taylor about his personal pet project of love of transcribing all of The Well-Tempered Clavier to clarinet: laughter maybe. Instead, Taylor's eyes lit up and he had leaned forward to ask Ryan a million questions about it, and Ryan had decided that he liked Taylor well enough after all, despite his misguided love for the post-Romantics and his unironic use of the word "bro."
They did Vivaldi's Viola Concerto in D minor in the middle of the program during the last two months of last season, and Ryan was amazed at how great it sounds night after night, how someone that ridiculous in every other facet of his life could be this good at classical music. When he finally decided that he should probably tell Taylor about how much he enjoyed listening to him play after the first month, he found him hiding out backstage after a show with a bag of ice.
"It's just some repetitive stress shit," Taylor had said breezily, when he noticed Ryan in the shadows, unsure of what to do. He lowered his hands out of view though. "It's cool."
"Maybe you should take some time off?" Ryan suggested tentatively, chewing on his lower lip.
Taylor started laughing hysterically, but it tapered out when he realized that Ryan was staring at him in confusion: "Oh," Taylor said, and then offered Ryan a wry smile instead. "You were serious? Yeah, not fucking happening, bro."
Realistically, Ryan knew that he should feel a marginal sense of horror or disgust. What he did experience, instead, was something that felt an awful lot like grudging respect in the pit of his stomach.)
"--now that he’s rehabbed all summer," Jordan's saying, when Ryan checks back in. "His grip's better than ever." He pauses, and then his smile shifts into something dirtier. "I would know."
Everyone in earshot starts making gagging noises. The Swedish House Mafia, out of hearing range, has apparently moved on from discussing the whip to the ever-important task of splitting up wood block and triangle duties.
“You know, you really don’t need to tell us about how you F sharp-ed your boyfriend all summer,” Whit says loudly, glaring from behind his double-bass.
There’s a loud, echoing bark of laughter from the bassoon players who have showed up for the meeting, a married coupled called the Strudwicks: “Come on, boys,” Mr. Strudwick says. And then his eyes light up and he leans forward: “Don’t you go starting a fugue now. Get it? Feud? But like…fugue?”
Mrs. Strudwick elbows her husband sharply in the ribs, but can’t stop the amused grin crossing her features.
“Give me a break, guys!” Jordan protests. “How did you know I wasn’t talking about, like. The cello-and-viola dubstep duo we started this summer?”
“Because no one cares about the viola!” Sam calls out. Ryan grins - he likes Sam: he feels a little bad about Sam getting relegated to second chair clarinet this season while Ryan gets the solos, but Sam always says that he doesn’t mind in a way that seems so sincere that it has to be true. Besides: Sam’s chirping is always pretty good for getting a rise out of Taylor.
Predictably, Taylor sits up straight and indignantly starts rattling off a list of famous and active viola players: “Pinchas Zuckerman, Steven Ansell, Jodi Levitz, and Tania Davis. Oh, and Elspeth Hanson: she’s a total smokeshow, too!”
“Mendelssohn. Both of them,” Jordan chimes in. “But especially Felix.”
“Oh my god,” Taylor says dreamily, turning his attention back to Jordan. “Felix Mendelssohn was such a beauty. I wish he wasn’t dead.”
“I know,” Jordan replies, also seemingly swept away but thoughts of Mendelssohn as he leans further into Taylor’s personal space. “But if he was still alive, he’d be like. Two hundred years old.”
“Fuck my life,” Whit mutters.
Taylor looks up for a moment: “You’re just jealous because there’s way more famous violists than bassists, old man.”
“Because bassists are too cool to care about fame,” Whit snipes back. “Now shut the fuck up before I shove my resin down your throat.”
“But that would be so un-resin-able of you,” Mr. Strudwick can’t help but add, and actually has to duck a large piece of resin flying at his head.
Before Ryan knows it, there are pieces of resin flying from all directions, in addition to pieces of reed that Sam has apparently tugged out of his case and is cheerfully lobbing at the Strings in apparent solidarity with the Strudwicks, while Smytty flaps his arms ineffectively in an attempt to try and get this group of alleged adults to calm the fuck down and get down to business. Ladi and Hemmer still seem to be debating the merits of the oboe sounding like both a shepherd and duck, so Ryan shuffles over a few seats, over to where the new kid, their new teenaged Russian violin wiz, has been watching the chaos with an amused grin.
“Hey,” Ryan says. “How do you feel about this Stamitz concerto?”
The new kid, Yakupov, turns to grin at Ryan, so bright and genuine that suddenly Ryan’s kind of looking forward to getting to do this weirdly obscure clarinet and violin concerto with him this season - “Okay,” Yakupov beams. “Stamitz is good. Tchaikovsky be best though.”
“That’s…not even close to the same thing,” Ryan replies, confused.
Yakupov just grins. “He is Russian,” he explains. “Better than Mussorgsky: I cannot sing.”
Ryan doesn’t think he understands anything about anything anymore.
“Hey new kid!” Horc yells over at him, somehow having managed to coax both Smytty and Khabi over to where he’s sitting in the front row to be casual viewers of the unfolding shitshow. “The first page of the Stamitz: what’s that on the bottom of the page in the second last measure?”
Yakupov turns his attention away from Ryan to squint at the bottom of the page: “Fermata?”
The war of resin, reeds and ridiculous jibes is temporarily halted when Yakupov is instantly group hugged by the entire strings section, including a groaning Whit, and Ryan’s knocked out of the way by a diving Ladi and a flailing Sam.
Over the howling laughter of the Swedish House Mafia and Smytty’s confused WHAT is going on?, and the Strudwicks clearly snapping photos of the impromptu group hugs on their iPhones, Ryan thinks he might actually kind of really hate his life sometimes.
and it goes on (and on and on and on)
Ryan’s not even sure how he finds himself in these situations: it's not even the first official rehearsal of the season; it's an optional rehearsal, for crying out loud, and their new conductor's handing out the perspective program for the first quarter, and already, there's a chorus of groans -
"Benjamin Britten? Britten?" Khabi spits out in disgust, glaring at the sheet in his hand. "That shit's for amateurs."
"The director requires a family-friendly component this season, I'm afraid," Ryan "Call-me-Smytty" Smyth says somewhat apologetically, already flustered at the daunting task of being a rookie conductor and having to handpick the program pieces. "It was either Young Person's Guide or Peter and the Wolf, and they didn’t want to hire a narrator. My hands are tied, folks."
"At least Prokoviev is Russian," Khabi mutters darkly.
"I would prefer Peter," Hemsky the oboist chimes in solemnly from beside Ryan. "I only don't hate all of you when I get to be the duck. I like the duck."
"Hemmer, you play the fucking oboe," Ladi says cheerfully, fitting his flute together. "You always sound like the fucking duck! Plus, we are doing Symphonie Fantastique, too: you have the fucking solo in the third movement as the fucking shepherd instead!"
Somehow, Ladi manages to completely miss the evil-eye that Hemsky is very obviously sending his way.
(Personally, Ryan kind of agrees with Khabi’s assessment of Britten, but he’s going to keep his trap shut, just in case rebellion gets him sent back to his junior orchestra in Red Deer. But he’s actually super excited about Symphonie Fantastique: Hector Berlioz is his favourite, and that fifth movement is his jam.)
"And what the fuck, Eine Kleine?” Khabi presses on angrily. "What is this? High school?! Who the fuck came up with this program?"
"It is kind of all over the place," Horc, the second chair violinist agrees from his spot sprawled out across two of the audience chairs - apparently veteran presence in this orchestra equates a lack of need for professionalism during meetings. “Which might be, you know. Sort of hard if we’re still searching for a concrete identity. Hey, I know: let’s try something completely new - Carl Czerny, anyone? Moreau would have said 'yes.'”
Nobody pauses to dignify Horc’s attempt at lightening the moment (or at least, Ryan hopes he was kidding - from what he understands, Moreau was the last conductor; he sincerely hopes that Moreau would not have put Czerny into a program: who does that?) with a response. Khabi just steamrolls on, undeterred: “You,” he says, pointing at Smytty. “You are racist against people who play timpani.”
“Uh, Khabi?” Horc says, swooping to the defence of the flabbergasted and speechless conductor. “Timpanist isn’t a race.”
“Racist against percussionists,” Khabi says firmly, and looks around for support from his fellow percussionists, and finds none when Maggie, Anton and Linus are all sitting in the back row of the audience, clearly involved in a heated discussion about who gets to crack the literal whip during percussion variation of the Britten piece. For fear of laughing at his older peer’s clear outrage, Ryan tries not to think back to the time last season when Jonsey the tuba player was giving him a quick introduction to their orchestra and had referred to the percussion section as “Stalin and the Swedish House Mafia” - it had kind of stuck.
"I like Eine Kleine," Taylor volunteers brightly from where he's lying at stage left with his head in the cellist's lap.
"Me too," Jordan agrees, one hand fondly petting through Taylor's hair and the other one twirling his cello bow. Ryan fights the urge to roll his eyes.
(Ryan first met Taylor at the beginning of the previous season when Taylor took him out for dinner - Ryan later finds out that it was mostly a misguided attempt by upper management to get their new wonder kids to bond. For the most part, Ryan's just slightly nervous about getting the chance to be part of a professional orchestra, but also feeling pretty grouchy that he's got to have dinner with a total dudebro of an apparent viola prodigy - who the fuck plays the viola, anyway? Dinner was actually pretty awkward, until Taylor had asked Ryan what he did in his downtime; Ryan had debated making something up, but in the end, went with the truth. He wasn’t entirely sure what reaction he was expecting when he told Taylor about his personal pet project of love of transcribing all of The Well-Tempered Clavier to clarinet: laughter maybe. Instead, Taylor's eyes lit up and he had leaned forward to ask Ryan a million questions about it, and Ryan had decided that he liked Taylor well enough after all, despite his misguided love for the post-Romantics and his unironic use of the word "bro."
They did Vivaldi's Viola Concerto in D minor in the middle of the program during the last two months of last season, and Ryan was amazed at how great it sounds night after night, how someone that ridiculous in every other facet of his life could be this good at classical music. When he finally decided that he should probably tell Taylor about how much he enjoyed listening to him play after the first month, he found him hiding out backstage after a show with a bag of ice.
"It's just some repetitive stress shit," Taylor had said breezily, when he noticed Ryan in the shadows, unsure of what to do. He lowered his hands out of view though. "It's cool."
"Maybe you should take some time off?" Ryan suggested tentatively, chewing on his lower lip.
Taylor started laughing hysterically, but it tapered out when he realized that Ryan was staring at him in confusion: "Oh," Taylor said, and then offered Ryan a wry smile instead. "You were serious? Yeah, not fucking happening, bro."
Realistically, Ryan knew that he should feel a marginal sense of horror or disgust. What he did experience, instead, was something that felt an awful lot like grudging respect in the pit of his stomach.)
"--now that he’s rehabbed all summer," Jordan's saying, when Ryan checks back in. "His grip's better than ever." He pauses, and then his smile shifts into something dirtier. "I would know."
Everyone in earshot starts making gagging noises. The Swedish House Mafia, out of hearing range, has apparently moved on from discussing the whip to the ever-important task of splitting up wood block and triangle duties.
“You know, you really don’t need to tell us about how you F sharp-ed your boyfriend all summer,” Whit says loudly, glaring from behind his double-bass.
There’s a loud, echoing bark of laughter from the bassoon players who have showed up for the meeting, a married coupled called the Strudwicks: “Come on, boys,” Mr. Strudwick says. And then his eyes light up and he leans forward: “Don’t you go starting a fugue now. Get it? Feud? But like…fugue?”
Mrs. Strudwick elbows her husband sharply in the ribs, but can’t stop the amused grin crossing her features.
“Give me a break, guys!” Jordan protests. “How did you know I wasn’t talking about, like. The cello-and-viola dubstep duo we started this summer?”
“Because no one cares about the viola!” Sam calls out. Ryan grins - he likes Sam: he feels a little bad about Sam getting relegated to second chair clarinet this season while Ryan gets the solos, but Sam always says that he doesn’t mind in a way that seems so sincere that it has to be true. Besides: Sam’s chirping is always pretty good for getting a rise out of Taylor.
Predictably, Taylor sits up straight and indignantly starts rattling off a list of famous and active viola players: “Pinchas Zuckerman, Steven Ansell, Jodi Levitz, and Tania Davis. Oh, and Elspeth Hanson: she’s a total smokeshow, too!”
“Mendelssohn. Both of them,” Jordan chimes in. “But especially Felix.”
“Oh my god,” Taylor says dreamily, turning his attention back to Jordan. “Felix Mendelssohn was such a beauty. I wish he wasn’t dead.”
“I know,” Jordan replies, also seemingly swept away but thoughts of Mendelssohn as he leans further into Taylor’s personal space. “But if he was still alive, he’d be like. Two hundred years old.”
“Fuck my life,” Whit mutters.
Taylor looks up for a moment: “You’re just jealous because there’s way more famous violists than bassists, old man.”
“Because bassists are too cool to care about fame,” Whit snipes back. “Now shut the fuck up before I shove my resin down your throat.”
“But that would be so un-resin-able of you,” Mr. Strudwick can’t help but add, and actually has to duck a large piece of resin flying at his head.
Before Ryan knows it, there are pieces of resin flying from all directions, in addition to pieces of reed that Sam has apparently tugged out of his case and is cheerfully lobbing at the Strings in apparent solidarity with the Strudwicks, while Smytty flaps his arms ineffectively in an attempt to try and get this group of alleged adults to calm the fuck down and get down to business. Ladi and Hemmer still seem to be debating the merits of the oboe sounding like both a shepherd and duck, so Ryan shuffles over a few seats, over to where the new kid, their new teenaged Russian violin wiz, has been watching the chaos with an amused grin.
“Hey,” Ryan says. “How do you feel about this Stamitz concerto?”
The new kid, Yakupov, turns to grin at Ryan, so bright and genuine that suddenly Ryan’s kind of looking forward to getting to do this weirdly obscure clarinet and violin concerto with him this season - “Okay,” Yakupov beams. “Stamitz is good. Tchaikovsky be best though.”
“That’s…not even close to the same thing,” Ryan replies, confused.
Yakupov just grins. “He is Russian,” he explains. “Better than Mussorgsky: I cannot sing.”
Ryan doesn’t think he understands anything about anything anymore.
“Hey new kid!” Horc yells over at him, somehow having managed to coax both Smytty and Khabi over to where he’s sitting in the front row to be casual viewers of the unfolding shitshow. “The first page of the Stamitz: what’s that on the bottom of the page in the second last measure?”
Yakupov turns his attention away from Ryan to squint at the bottom of the page: “Fermata?”
The war of resin, reeds and ridiculous jibes is temporarily halted when Yakupov is instantly group hugged by the entire strings section, including a groaning Whit, and Ryan’s knocked out of the way by a diving Ladi and a flailing Sam.
Over the howling laughter of the Swedish House Mafia and Smytty’s confused WHAT is going on?, and the Strudwicks clearly snapping photos of the impromptu group hugs on their iPhones, Ryan thinks he might actually kind of really hate his life sometimes.