Crazy April!

Just when I thought I was doing a good job of keeping my blog updated, April happened... April is a traditionally busy month around here and this year was no different. I'll hit a few of the highlights:

First things first, we had band contest in April. My band made a 1 1 2 on stage and a 1 1 1 in sight-reading. I was very pleased with both of their performances and was also kind of glad to have that monkey off my back! Then, the junior high bands had two days of contests just a week ago and while I didn't take a band per se, I did spend a lot of time trying to get these bands ready to go. They did very well, making mostly ones with a couple of twos sprinkled in there.

Then we had what amounted to two weeks of Symphony. Normally we rehearse over the course of one week, but with this go around, we had a couple of rehearsals the week before, too. We played Beethoven 9 (finale only), Sibelius 7th Symphony and some other smaller tunes. I only played on the Beethoven. Which was kind of nice, but it also meant a lot of sitting around and hurrying up and waiting.

Daniel Hege was our guest conductor for this series and I was thoroughly impressed by him.
He was upbeat and funny, but never at the expense of losing time to improvement. Additionally, he really kept the orchestra's feet to the fire as far as playing the music exactly the way he wanted it played. I don't know if everyone shares my opinion on this, but I would much rather have a conductor run us through our paces and help us to really sound good, versus someone who would rather be diplomatic and uninspired.

Then the very next day we started rehearsals for the opera: Cold Sassy Tree. This is a modern opera (I think it's less than ten years old, too), so I was unsure what to think. The music is very rhythmic and punctuated and has some Bernstein-esque moments. By the middle of the week, I started to let the music grow on me and by the end of the week, I pretty well enjoyed it.

Because this is a modern opera, there was much more for us to do in the percussion section. Here's a partial list of all the instruments we had crammed in the pit: snare drum, tenor drum, triangle, suspended cymbals (2), tambourines (3), glockenspiel, xylophone, vibraphone, chimes, gong, bass drum and four crotales (F#, A, B and E). Then, of course, there were four timpani, too.
It was a pretty athletic even at times getting to all of the instruments with the right mallets in just enough time! (I should mention that this is about as athletic as I get...)

The conductor for this opera was Andy Anderson. Having played the opera for several years now (I think since 2000), I can fully attest to the conductor setting the mood for the week. If you have a conductor who is a drag, is no fun to be around and is generally not easy to work with, you can guarantee that that is going to be a LONG week. Heck, it's going to be a long week no matter how you slice it.

But, if you get a conductor who is vibrant and enthusiastic, you can really enjoy the process more. This was the case for this opera. Andy has a very dry since of humor that is also a bit self-effacing, and he is quick to slip a joke in among directions or instructions. He kept us rolling all week and every time we thought we had the last laugh, he countered with another comment that was usually quite brilliant.

So you might expect someone who is joking around all of the time to not keep the orchestra on our toes, either, but this was not the case. He, like Daniel Hege, kept us on the front edge of our collective chairs, making sure we were playing everything as good as possible.

It was a refreshing week of opera and one that I even looked forward to going to. (Keep in mind, that I really only saw my family for about an hour each day between getting home from school and going to the next rehearsal. In fact, during opera week, we would pack our dinners and go have a picnic at the GNC. Then Regan and I would play with bubbles in the foyer. That was a lot of fun, but was not a lot of family time...)

A ton more things happened in April, but I'll have to let them drift into memory. The only other thing worth mentioning is my new band piece, Heroes of Old, Men of Renown got it's first rehearsal. But, there will undoubtedly be another post about that for another day.