Saturday, December 25, 2010

On Christmas Day

How wonderful to finally reach this day of peace, after the insanity that always seems to preceed it! After the final White Christmas on Dec 19, I have been "music free" - kinda fun. We did go to a fabulous concert by the Clarion Brass Ensemble - really top notch group here - for a taste of their concert go here http://figarotunes.com/12brassatooning.htm

We had a lovely Christmas morning, I was reminded why I never cook, and my hubby hooked up the big tv to youtube! We can finally see them without endless reloading and jerking pictures! Fun fun. In honor of our new hooked-up-ness, here is a Christmas recording of me and some random other people http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiR5j72IoRQ

Thursday, December 16, 2010

4 more White Christmas-es

Wow, the month is flying by! So glad to be on the last week of WC, it has been fun working with everyone but it isn't my favorite show. I do feel like I have improved quite a bit on clarinet and sax though.

The orchestra concert was a reasonable success - more ticket sales than they expected and we made ALMOST as much as they had hoped on the raffle. It is just sad how much we are struggling to stay alive here. Hopefully things will look up next year. The music was ok in the end, no actual ORCHESTRA music, but for a pops concert it was ok. Of course, in the past this hasn't been a pops concert (or at least 1/2 has always been legit); but if that's what it takes...

Hopefully we will be picking the next season in January. It is fun to be on the committee that proposes the schedule, I always try to suggest at least one good oboe piece! We also have our benefit ball in January - I'll probably get to play my sax for something...

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Another messiah

Overall, things went pretty well considering. Since they cancelled the rehearsal (snow) we were contacted via phone about coming 2 hours earlier before the gig. Previously we were supposed to come at 5 to touch a couple of things before a 7pm concert. So everyone was coming at 3, and we'd have a regular rehearsal from 3-5. Except.

No one called the trumpets/timpani players! This would be their only rehearsal, and they were all set to come at 5:30, the "manager" got all defensive and it was kind of terrible, but they did fine. They all got there by 5:20, we ran the tpt stuff and were done by 5:30. I don't get the natural trumpet thing though - our tpt players are terrific and can play anything on all the various modern trumpets. I get that it is fun to have a challenge, but this takes me right back to jr hi. Oh well.

The tenor soloist was terribly sick and we had a sub, he did great (always a relief!). The other soloists were our "usual" ones and all did a bang up job, fun to just sit back during the arias and enjoy! Our usual 2nd oboist couldn't do this concert so I had my friend M play, we don't get to play together enough anymore. It was fun and we did get to grab a quick bite between rehearsal and concert. She is playing 1st oboe with the Expensive Private College and they are doing the Brahms Vln on Monday (big oboe solo)! She will be fab I'm sure, wish I could go.

I have finally succumbed to illness - REALLY sore throat. I can't even talk this am, and I feel terrible. I have one more WC this week, but then 2 days off.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Christmas gigging

So White Christmas continues, starting to feel like we should mark each night with a tally scraped on the pit wall. But last night the 3 wind players all had subs (bet that was interesting) and we were at the Little Orchestra rehearsal for the Christmas concert Dec 11. I'm sure it will be fine, apparently there is a choir, a child to sing the bit from Home Alone, some grown up soloists and us backing it all up. Blech.

I had hoped it would be cool orchestral arrangements (one guy is arranging the whole concert for free, which is lovely). But it is super disorganized, we are getting our parts in .pdf via email, which is great, except that out of 14 songs I only have 5. I asked our "librarian" and she said it was no problem, there just wasn't oboe on any of those. Somewhat annoying, but whatever. So I show up last night and the arranger guy (who is also conducting everything) is like, where is the oboe? This is a big solo! But there are no parts to be found anywhere. Grrrrr.

So I'm missing a paying gig (WC), to show up for a less paying but usually more satisfying and consistant gig, but I have nothing to play. I *think* I will end up with music for 7 pieces, and that is ok with me - I don't have to play on everything (although it is WEIRD for the oboe to not have parts if there are other winds in an orchestra!). I did get some reading done, the magazine I've been bringing to WC finally got opened in orchestra rehearsal!

The other crazy thing is the weather here has been bad - so bad they cancelled the only Messiah rehearsal Tuesday. So I'll be playing that tomorrow night (another sub for WC) with no rehearsal. Not worried about playing it, but keeping track of which mvts we are doing is always a challenge (we do the Xmas part and about 10 other random bits, including HC of course!)

The endless nights away are starting to wear on me, things would need to be different at home if I did this all the time! I see very little of J these days because before work he has his "puttering" time (usually messing with cars or some such) and when he gets home he goes directly down to his email in the basement, and I have to leave in usually 1/2 hour depending on when he gets home. And of course he is usually asleep or the next thing to it when I get home. Fortunatly I see D after school every day, makes me so glad I'm not teaching this semester!