Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Moment of Insanity

WHY...did I volunteer to play all my doubles for Ds school this morning?! Moving all the cases and stands is a pain, and setting up is a pain, and PLAYING them is a pain...but his teacher is so thrilled - she got the soundtrack and I guess she'll play a little from that then I'll play my part for the kids so they can see how it fits in. And I'll talk about why I have so many instruments, and what they are. My guess is I'll play a little blurb on each one, and that'll be it.

So hopefully I will be feeling like I did a good deed later today. I have the hauling down to two (big) loads - just for fun I should weigh in. After tonight I can leave the stands at the theater (not the instruments, I'm just worried that way) so even though it will still take two trips it will probably be 1/2 the weight!

Since this is my blog I am going to whine about playing on a platform for a few moments. I got to the theater and since this is a concert version of the show (West Side Story) we are onstage. It didn't occur to me that they might put me on a riser. These risers are 2.5 feet up, and the worst part is all my stands. Many of them (bass clar in particular) have a fairly large footprint, and they have to be in a certain place so I can grab them FAST - there are a lot of quick changes in act I. Because of the riser, we only have about 3 feet from back to front - and I had at least another foot I was using out there. But I think I got things to work, although that was with only two of us on the riser (me taking up most of the space!) Tonight the third guy (book 2) will be there, I guess he can take his 1 foot of lateral space I left him! hehehe.

1 comment:

Bret said...

I can't tell you how many times I've just assumed that pit conditions will be good: that I'll have plenty of space, that I'll be able to make eye contact with the conductor, that I won't have water sprayed on me (and my instruments) during the onstage rainstorm. Wrong every time. *sigh*