![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
more nattering, mostly music
Oct. 26th, 2022 10:11 amSunday's LCCB concert went well. J said "well, that was a concert". ayup. The LCCB is pretty good, but after years of FCB and CHS concerts, it's also pretty apparent that it could be much better. I usually tell people that the LCCB is at the level of a good HS band. (I've heard some *excellent* HS bands, as well as very good and pretty good and decent. Probably a couple of really-not-very-good bands, too. 15 years of Band & Orchestra Festival will do that.) If I've gotta play Tenor in a band, this is the one to do it in -- it's really not my primary instrument anymore, and I'm flailing a lot more than I like. I'm also struggling with reeds - the soft reed is too soft, the hard reed is too hard -- so I need to buy a few in different strengths and see which combination of reed-mouthpiece-ligature works best.
Monday's FCB rehearsal was pretty intense -- you'd think we had a concert coming up, or something. After many emails, it was determined that the FCB could use the bandroom for rehearsal, as the kids were rehearsing on stage. We were low on percussion, though, since much of it was onstage. We may need to rejigger the layout for Sunday's concert because the stage at the Hawk is a different shape than the bandroom we rehearse in. fortunately, I think we can, because there are only three seats in the front row; so I can pull them in a couple of feet and still have sufficient spacing side-to-side. The third row is always our problem row -- too many seats for the space -- so we may be rearranging on the fly. whee? (I really don't like playing at the Hawk - the acoustics suck (they were only iffy before the band shell got removed...), the chairs are bad, there's not enough stands, and we have to move all the percussion in from somewhere because they have none there.)
Last nights LCCB rehearsal (a sight reading run-through of the Christmas concert) was, um, interesting. I left a couple of pages of music on the printer, so had to sit that one out. He handed out Russian Christmas Music this year. I didn't remember ever playing it on Tenor Sax, but I must have, because I got *all* the entrances. OK, so it was significantly slower than either the FCB or Adult Band Camp played it, but the Tenor part is very different than the Bari part. A trumpet player behind me says that we played it at All-State band in 1981, which is the only place that I would have played it -- I know we didn't play it in college, and there's no way we would have played it in HS. I need to find the AllState record.... The Bari player beside me has never played RCM, and he really doesn't like it. To be fair, it is a hard piece, and there's lots of meter and tempo changes, and BS doesn't like the way the director does them. (RCM was composed by Alfred Reed in about two weeks to be played at a joint Army Bands concert, and could easily be called Orthodox Christmas Music -- it's all Eastern Orthodox Church music.)
I've gotten into the gardens a few times in the last few days, and did manage to get a couple of the smaller gardens mostly cleared out. I still need to pull the phlox in the NW garden, but the ground is so dry that things are breaking off at the surface. It started raining last night after I got home from rehearsal, so I may not get back out there until sometime Friday. Today I need to work on a costume for Sunday, and run errands. There is an election leads meeting at the Rod & Gun club this afternoon (they're the emergency polling place), but I told them that I probably wouldn't be there -- I didn't find out until yesterday, and I have other plans for the afternoon....
Monday's FCB rehearsal was pretty intense -- you'd think we had a concert coming up, or something. After many emails, it was determined that the FCB could use the bandroom for rehearsal, as the kids were rehearsing on stage. We were low on percussion, though, since much of it was onstage. We may need to rejigger the layout for Sunday's concert because the stage at the Hawk is a different shape than the bandroom we rehearse in. fortunately, I think we can, because there are only three seats in the front row; so I can pull them in a couple of feet and still have sufficient spacing side-to-side. The third row is always our problem row -- too many seats for the space -- so we may be rearranging on the fly. whee? (I really don't like playing at the Hawk - the acoustics suck (they were only iffy before the band shell got removed...), the chairs are bad, there's not enough stands, and we have to move all the percussion in from somewhere because they have none there.)
Last nights LCCB rehearsal (a sight reading run-through of the Christmas concert) was, um, interesting. I left a couple of pages of music on the printer, so had to sit that one out. He handed out Russian Christmas Music this year. I didn't remember ever playing it on Tenor Sax, but I must have, because I got *all* the entrances. OK, so it was significantly slower than either the FCB or Adult Band Camp played it, but the Tenor part is very different than the Bari part. A trumpet player behind me says that we played it at All-State band in 1981, which is the only place that I would have played it -- I know we didn't play it in college, and there's no way we would have played it in HS. I need to find the AllState record.... The Bari player beside me has never played RCM, and he really doesn't like it. To be fair, it is a hard piece, and there's lots of meter and tempo changes, and BS doesn't like the way the director does them. (RCM was composed by Alfred Reed in about two weeks to be played at a joint Army Bands concert, and could easily be called Orthodox Christmas Music -- it's all Eastern Orthodox Church music.)
I've gotten into the gardens a few times in the last few days, and did manage to get a couple of the smaller gardens mostly cleared out. I still need to pull the phlox in the NW garden, but the ground is so dry that things are breaking off at the surface. It started raining last night after I got home from rehearsal, so I may not get back out there until sometime Friday. Today I need to work on a costume for Sunday, and run errands. There is an election leads meeting at the Rod & Gun club this afternoon (they're the emergency polling place), but I told them that I probably wouldn't be there -- I didn't find out until yesterday, and I have other plans for the afternoon....
