Concert #7: Shorter is better
We're past the halfway point in the summer, which blows my mind. How does it go by so quickly? I only have three more concerts before we take a month off, then shift back to Mondays in September. Wild. It reminds me that I'm not doing enough with what little time I get during the summers. Perhaps I should remedy that.
It's Illinois' Bicentennial, so this week's concert tied into that theme--several Chicago-type songs, or featuring people who were from the state, or what have you. A few of the songs are ones we've done several times, so imagine our surprise when the final song of the show, a Benny Goodman medley, got borked really badly. We've done it a half-dozen times since I've been in the band, and it ends with a portion that's repeated four times. Each subsequent time, a new group gets added in. During the rehearsal, the trumpets completely missed their entrance during the third go-around for whatever reasons, so that the fourth time, when the woodwinds were supposed to come in, we were like, uh, we're missing something... And we had to go back and do it again. There's also standing and swaying at the end, and I have a feeling many of us were pretty tired and probably zoned out by then, but it's rare for an entire section to do that. Also, the director said, oh, if the concert runs short and we need to fill some time, we're going to add Random March at the end! Uh, let's not. The Goodman medley is a strong ending song--if we play it correctly--and it's okay if we short the audience ten minutes. They won't mind. The musicians certainly won't mind. I don't know if someone said anything to him, because while we did have a slightly shorter concert on Thursday, we did *not* add the march, phew.
One of the songs we did had a soloist from the tuba section, and the song was an homage to the farms that had been in the area. The surprise was that our soloist wasn't someone who has soloed with us before, so it was nice for him to play and he did a nice job. Actually, the bigger surprise was when the MC read his bio and we found out he originally was a sax player. He changed to tuba in high school or college, and he met his wife while playing tuba in college, and now he, his wife, and her father are half the tuba section. Speaking of band families, the second assistant director did a couple songs--haven't seen AD1 in a while so maybe he's gone away on vacation--and one of her pieces was the one performed after the bake sale announcement. This week the host was an animal rescue, and they'd brought friends, and AD2 was trying to get her husband to bring a barking someone home. No pressure, dude. I have to say, it's highly amusing watching this interaction between them. At least he's a good sport about it.
Thursday had on and off rain, so I spent time in my car while waiting for band; Wednesday was a Target run, finally. Anyway, I was parked near what seemed to be a thistle bush or something, and holy crap that's the largest bumblebee I've ever seen! I'd looked up and saw this bright yellow through some of the branches. After a few moments I realized it was a goldfinch, not a bee. Phew! Duh. :P Goldfinches are my favorite birds, tied with cardinals, so I kept watching him going to town on the flowers that had gone to seed, picking out the fuzzy seedheads or whatever they are, mouthful after mouthful. He was very industrious. And then the other, plain brown finches would come by and they'd get in a tiff, and soon the brown finches would swarm, then fly away, and the goldfinch would resume his work on another branch. This went on for a while, and I alternated watching that and reading my paper.
We also received our music for next week, the audience request concert. Oh, man, are they accommodating a lot of people--it's 1.5 concerts' worth of music, including a bunch of marches. The Eb clarinet player was like, maybe I don't want to come to this concert...maybe my kids are going to be sick that week... Yeah, I don't blame her. It makes my jaw hurt looking at it! And then, on Thursday, the section leader comes up to me and says, the regular piccolo player let me know she can't be here next week. You're my go-to picc person, you play wonderfully, but 6th chair recently got a new piccolo and would like to try it out. Would you mind sharing this concert with her? (I'd end up sitting next to her anyway.) I told the section leader, actually, there's a piccolo duet in one of the songs, so there'd have to be two of us regardless. Given that it's going to be a marathon, sure! We can share. I immediately set about dividing who should get what. I definitely wanted one song, but past that... And I'd seen 6th chair already, but she must have been going around talking to people I think, so it was a little while before I got to speak with her. I went up and said, hey, did the section leader talk to you? She went, yeah, but I really just want to play the duet and that's it; I've hardly played piccolo recently (i.e., she likely doesn't feel her chops are up for it). I let her know the duet is honestly kinda dumb--it's maybe 8 measures to start the song and that's it, unless we do the alternate ending which is all piccolo and basically nothing else, so the rest of the band is not a fan--and she was still, nope, that's fine, you can do the rest of it. Sigh. Okay. Better have the IV set up for me after band next week, 'cause I might need it.
Meanwhile, I was going through my music today to pull the songs I already had. The song I definitely wanted to do picc on was an Aaron Copland medley and I thought I had it. Well...as it turns out, the titles are actually different. One's "A Copland *This*"; one's "A Copland *That*." Wait a sec, that's weird. Did I type the name wrong or something? That's not like me. So I pulled my copies of the music, and I'd had the title right. They're both by the same publisher and have the same editor, and they were even published the same year. However, there are variations, and the publisher codes are ten digits off. There's clear cribbing from one to the other, same notes, same key, everything, but there are some differences between the pieces. Okay, this makes some sense to me; I'd done a Copland medley in college, and the older version I'd had from this band, something seemed off on it, like it wasn't how I'd remembered it going. Now I know why--because we weren't playing the same song! But parts of it were identical. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!?!? Arrgh. It was so weird and really frustrating to me. At least now I should be playing the one I did in college, and on the piccolo part like I'd done then, so perhaps it'll all come back to me on Wednesday during the dress. But, I tell you, the whole thing was really surreal. I don't recall seeing something like this before. Except...we're also doing the theme from American Bandstand, which I recall doing WAAAY back at camp--like, when the show was still on, and I was still a camper--and the font for the title was the same as I remembered. But it's *also* a different arrangement! Same editor, same publisher, same age, but different. This week is blowing my mind and I haven't even played any of the music yet.
It's Illinois' Bicentennial, so this week's concert tied into that theme--several Chicago-type songs, or featuring people who were from the state, or what have you. A few of the songs are ones we've done several times, so imagine our surprise when the final song of the show, a Benny Goodman medley, got borked really badly. We've done it a half-dozen times since I've been in the band, and it ends with a portion that's repeated four times. Each subsequent time, a new group gets added in. During the rehearsal, the trumpets completely missed their entrance during the third go-around for whatever reasons, so that the fourth time, when the woodwinds were supposed to come in, we were like, uh, we're missing something... And we had to go back and do it again. There's also standing and swaying at the end, and I have a feeling many of us were pretty tired and probably zoned out by then, but it's rare for an entire section to do that. Also, the director said, oh, if the concert runs short and we need to fill some time, we're going to add Random March at the end! Uh, let's not. The Goodman medley is a strong ending song--if we play it correctly--and it's okay if we short the audience ten minutes. They won't mind. The musicians certainly won't mind. I don't know if someone said anything to him, because while we did have a slightly shorter concert on Thursday, we did *not* add the march, phew.
One of the songs we did had a soloist from the tuba section, and the song was an homage to the farms that had been in the area. The surprise was that our soloist wasn't someone who has soloed with us before, so it was nice for him to play and he did a nice job. Actually, the bigger surprise was when the MC read his bio and we found out he originally was a sax player. He changed to tuba in high school or college, and he met his wife while playing tuba in college, and now he, his wife, and her father are half the tuba section. Speaking of band families, the second assistant director did a couple songs--haven't seen AD1 in a while so maybe he's gone away on vacation--and one of her pieces was the one performed after the bake sale announcement. This week the host was an animal rescue, and they'd brought friends, and AD2 was trying to get her husband to bring a barking someone home. No pressure, dude. I have to say, it's highly amusing watching this interaction between them. At least he's a good sport about it.
Thursday had on and off rain, so I spent time in my car while waiting for band; Wednesday was a Target run, finally. Anyway, I was parked near what seemed to be a thistle bush or something, and holy crap that's the largest bumblebee I've ever seen! I'd looked up and saw this bright yellow through some of the branches. After a few moments I realized it was a goldfinch, not a bee. Phew! Duh. :P Goldfinches are my favorite birds, tied with cardinals, so I kept watching him going to town on the flowers that had gone to seed, picking out the fuzzy seedheads or whatever they are, mouthful after mouthful. He was very industrious. And then the other, plain brown finches would come by and they'd get in a tiff, and soon the brown finches would swarm, then fly away, and the goldfinch would resume his work on another branch. This went on for a while, and I alternated watching that and reading my paper.
We also received our music for next week, the audience request concert. Oh, man, are they accommodating a lot of people--it's 1.5 concerts' worth of music, including a bunch of marches. The Eb clarinet player was like, maybe I don't want to come to this concert...maybe my kids are going to be sick that week... Yeah, I don't blame her. It makes my jaw hurt looking at it! And then, on Thursday, the section leader comes up to me and says, the regular piccolo player let me know she can't be here next week. You're my go-to picc person, you play wonderfully, but 6th chair recently got a new piccolo and would like to try it out. Would you mind sharing this concert with her? (I'd end up sitting next to her anyway.) I told the section leader, actually, there's a piccolo duet in one of the songs, so there'd have to be two of us regardless. Given that it's going to be a marathon, sure! We can share. I immediately set about dividing who should get what. I definitely wanted one song, but past that... And I'd seen 6th chair already, but she must have been going around talking to people I think, so it was a little while before I got to speak with her. I went up and said, hey, did the section leader talk to you? She went, yeah, but I really just want to play the duet and that's it; I've hardly played piccolo recently (i.e., she likely doesn't feel her chops are up for it). I let her know the duet is honestly kinda dumb--it's maybe 8 measures to start the song and that's it, unless we do the alternate ending which is all piccolo and basically nothing else, so the rest of the band is not a fan--and she was still, nope, that's fine, you can do the rest of it. Sigh. Okay. Better have the IV set up for me after band next week, 'cause I might need it.
Meanwhile, I was going through my music today to pull the songs I already had. The song I definitely wanted to do picc on was an Aaron Copland medley and I thought I had it. Well...as it turns out, the titles are actually different. One's "A Copland *This*"; one's "A Copland *That*." Wait a sec, that's weird. Did I type the name wrong or something? That's not like me. So I pulled my copies of the music, and I'd had the title right. They're both by the same publisher and have the same editor, and they were even published the same year. However, there are variations, and the publisher codes are ten digits off. There's clear cribbing from one to the other, same notes, same key, everything, but there are some differences between the pieces. Okay, this makes some sense to me; I'd done a Copland medley in college, and the older version I'd had from this band, something seemed off on it, like it wasn't how I'd remembered it going. Now I know why--because we weren't playing the same song! But parts of it were identical. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!?!? Arrgh. It was so weird and really frustrating to me. At least now I should be playing the one I did in college, and on the piccolo part like I'd done then, so perhaps it'll all come back to me on Wednesday during the dress. But, I tell you, the whole thing was really surreal. I don't recall seeing something like this before. Except...we're also doing the theme from American Bandstand, which I recall doing WAAAY back at camp--like, when the show was still on, and I was still a camper--and the font for the title was the same as I remembered. But it's *also* a different arrangement! Same editor, same publisher, same age, but different. This week is blowing my mind and I haven't even played any of the music yet.