This will be quick and scattershot, as I’m leaving for the airport in a half hour or so. I’m squeezing in a little vacation between orchestra rehearsals, checking off a bucket list item and driving the Florida Keys. I’ll do a blow-by-blow here, although, like the West Coast trip, it might be after the fact.
Jesus Christ Superstar finished up. It was a ton of fun! So great getting to really get to know that score more than just listening to the album over and over, 50 years ago. Kudos to impresario, director and conductor Will Remmers, who was thoroughly prepared, aware of and in control of every detail, a delight on stage as always, and – most importantly – completely pleasant to work with.
We did a fun thing on the second Saturday – we sort of sight-read a little orchestra concert after the show! (we did run through it once immediately before the show). Sullivan’s Overture di Ballo, which has long been on my bucket list to conduct, and I’d never played it. A Spanish-language song that Will and Christina sang, called I am the fire or some such. And, believe or not, the Candide overture, which is not something you whip up in 15 minutes and then perform. But so much fun to play. I’ve conducted it twice, but can’t remember when I last played it, although of course I have.
I’m now in rehearsal for QUO‘s next concert. We had our first rehearsal last night. It’s my first time back since the Heartquake a year and a half ago, where I had to pull out of not only that QUO concert, but a Doctor’s Orchestra concert. I’d been delighted, for that DO concert, to get a chance to play Mahler #1 again and was so disappointed to not do it – but now we’re doing it with QUO! Eight horns on 7 parts. The last time I did it, I was 7th – now I’m 6th, so slooowwwwly moving up. We’re also doing a Lili Boulanger piece which I’m not on, but filled in on last night – and a premiere of a new work by Rajna Sawaminathan, which was commissioned for us. This last piece is very aleatoric and quite unusual, and doesn’t make a ton of sense on the page, but we got through the first movement last night and have at least the bones of it. I think as we get more used to it, we’ll be more willing to ‘play’.
Having taken a bookcase and about a bazillion CDs from Mariah and Josh when they moved a few weeks ago (oh, M&J came to JCS! They took me out to dinner! It was lovely!), I was inspired to finally order the 2nd bookcase for the music library in the living room.
All those opera and musical theater scores have been moved into the new bookcase, leaving another bookcase free for CD binders. All this makes me super happy. I’ll be (finally) ordering a wooden music stand that will live in that corner too, pretty much as soon as I get home.
Oh, you can see what the library looked like before I got the new bookcase, because I recorded another Invention!
I started a project around COVID time to learn all the inventions (I only had three under my fingers when I started). Now, the ‘done’ will be all 15 learned, up to tempo, recorded and memorized. I pretty much have the first 8 done, plus 13, and 9 is very close. 12 is farther behind, but coming along and the others are in their infancy. But, while I find it tough to sit down at the piano for an hour of practice, it’s a lovely break to sit down for 15 minutes, and these little pieces benefit from that.
All right – next up, Key Largo!
The Toast Point Page 