May Day

Today is the first day in weeks that is has NOT (so far) snowed! Happy May Day!

Giggage has been good - the Beethoven trio concert was fun, and I think I played the EH part well. I thought it was going to be after an intermission though, but the "intermission" was a sermon (this concert was at a church)! So instead of getting a few moments to honk on the EH I started cold (as did the 2nd oboe), we didn't even tune (1st oboist said no). Huh. Ah well, the delights of live performance.

Fiddler was fun - such a great show. This was a HS production and the kids really did a great job. Orchestra has started rehearsals for our season finale - Scherezade is just as scary as expected! But it is coming together and I'm sure it will be great in 2 weeks. The Afternoon of a Faun (NOT Fawn as listed on our stupid website) which I thought would be a breeze is actually really hard to put together - all that rubato I guess. DD is conducting in big beats instead of subdividing and I think that really threw the flutes off, but they were getting it by the end. I am concerned that we may never practice the Haydn farewell symphony - it is straightforward but I'd like to play though it!

Yesterday the ww quartet (our hornist is on leave til summer) played for the symphony wine club tasting - at a really lovely venue called the white house. Hope we get to play there again sometime. We were mainly background music, but it was very nice and I think we played well. Our flutist forgot her stand - she had her music on a chair which was less than optimal, then I offered to share stands - not ideal since we had lots of music and some complicated page turns. We had asked all the symphony volunteers if they had stands in their cars or were close enough to get one from home. The venue owner had a podium but it was too flat and too high (funny how specialized music stands are!). The flute player was making do but you could tell she was frustrated - when 2 minutes before we were to start my husband swoops in with a music stand he had rented from the tiny music store down the street! It had never occured to us to check, I thought he was quite brilliant to just go off by himself and even ask to rent such a thing! Saved the day.

So this week we start rehearsals for Full Monty - I'm playing bari sax (main) tenor, subbing oboe for flute, and alto recorder. Thanks to Grama Ruth for giving me that particular beast years ago, I've never used it til now! I'm interested in how the bari stuff goes - this part is written for a low A bari, and of course my old bari only goes to Bb. I found this great plumbing fixture (at Lowes!) that fits right in the bell to drop my Bb's to As, which means I can't play Bb's then, but we'll see if it works. I've had two offers from people with low A baris if I want to use them, but I'd like to use my own if possible.