At last some action!

Tonight I'm playing with the local community band (that J plays in) as a ringer - they are actually doing some music that has excellent sightreading twisties for my fingers. I've been working on reading faster stuff without mistakes, not one of my better skills, and this is a good opportunity. Also nice to support the band.

And then the dearth of activity is over (hopefully!) Our ww5 has been talking the talk for three or more YEARS, and we will finally meet at my house for the first time Wednesday! I'm very excited about playing chamber music with these people (principals in the orchestra mostly).

This weekend we have our first Messiah Singalong. I hate singalongs, but they can be great crowd pleasers. I am worried the powers that be are charging too much, since so many churches offer singalongs for free around here. Love to play the Messiah, even part of it (as long as it has the normal orchestration!) at Christmas - really gets me in the holiday spirit.

Then next week is our orchestra concert - we're doing a bunch of Christmas music (probably too much!) and Swan Lake Suite, yay, big oboe solo right up front! And all the fun little dances, some of which have nasty little parts. But all very doable, nothing too stressful this year (so far). I'm playing for a church cantata later in the month, sort of weird to have all this available time since I'm not directing the bells.

So maybe I'll be better about posting now I have some musical things going on...

MHSR

I have been terrible at keeping up this blog, it is so hard when there are no gigs! We haven't even had a rehearsal due to budget cuts, so next week will be the first one since the concert. Which I haven't written about either!

The concert went as well as I could have hoped for - it was a big one for me. The Dvorak New World (I played EH on the 2nd mvt) was probably the best I've played it. So glad I was able to use the fabulous Lau bin bocal. The sad thing is for the Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue they did NOT tune the piano!!! Such a shame, DD did an amazing job, my high Es came out great and the clarinet player rocked. I am so annoyed with our venue - they are now charging us for each piece of equipment (including the out of tune piano). We bring much of the percussion equipment from the local HS, but they are just pricing us out of the building. We don't rehearse there anymore, and 3 of our concerts will be at another venue.

So we rehearse this week on Thursday, but Friday I am getting my first gig in the big arena downtown - with the snazzy group (whose name I will spell wrong in an attempt to not get hits) Man hime Steem Roler. Hmmmm. Ok that is stupid, maybe I shouldn't care if people find my blog. But I'm very excited about this! We don't get music til the actual gig, but I've been assured this is not a hard book. Hope not!

And today I'm sending off my Laubin oboe to the "factory" - hopefully it will play delightfully when it comes back. I haven't been playing it at all (it was a hand-me-down from my teacher) because it is pretty gummy, but it may have some twisty rods or something too. The sound is amazing though.