Heh-heh-heh. Still twelve on the inside.
Yeah, we had our first big Queer Urban Orchestra concert of the year. The season’s theme is “A Place for Us” and the concert was titled Queer Cosmos. The big featured piece was Holst’s The Planets, which I’d never played in its entirety. (I’d conducted and played “Jupiter” – different performances – which is like God’s gift to the horn section, and I’d actually played “Mars” in the band arrangement on tuba, go figure.)
I was playing Horn 5, which meant I was tacet during “Mercury” and “Neptune”, and wasn’t playing in the other pieces in the concert, so it was actually a really light lift for me, although also challenging enough in a fun way to make it absolutely worth my time. Most rehearsals, they scheduled the personnel-heavy Planets first, so I could then go home in time to get a late dinner at the Mexican place before the kitchen shut down. But the second-to-last rehearsal, with the choir, they switched it around and all my stuff was last, meaning I had hours to kill between work and rehearsal. I thought about going to a movie or something, but I did boring stuff instead – hung around at the office scanning and shredding old files from home, then grabbing dinner. It was fine.
The concert was delightful. I sat in the audience for the first half with my buddy Martin. It led off with some songs with choir by Holst’s daughter Imogen, and they were really charming. And then a revision of a new piano concerto called “Stargazer” by Viet Cuong. It was wonderfully performed, but I found that it didn’t have much of an arc and all sounded kind of the same to me. I didn’t hate it at all, thought it was delightful to hear, but didn’t find it particularly interesting.
The Planets went beautifully and was very well-received. It’s notable for having a large orchestration, typical strings, but also two harps, celeste, organ, and extended brass and wind sections, including oddities like bass oboe (covered beautifully by my buddy Brian). My band-geeky heart loves that sort of thing, still remembers fondly the concert freshman year in high school where I played Bb contrabass clarinet.
My fun movements were “Mars” and “Jupiter” of course, and also “Uranus”. “Venus” was perfectly pleasant, I didn’t have much to do. “Saturn” was sort of aggressively boring – had quite a bit to play, but it was all tedious. I’ll have to learn to appreciate that movement from the outside at some point. “Mercury” was delightful and I was a tad resentful I didn’t get to play it. “Neptune”, which is dreamy and ends with a wordless women’s choir, was lovely, although I had ideas about how the women’s choir should have been handled a bit differently, but refrained from putting in my oar.
Anyway, very much worth the practice and rehearsal time.
Undetermined whether I’m playing in the next concert (I probably am, but there may be more players than parts), but I have a church gig up in Connecticut this week with Dr. Craig at First Congregational. We’re playing this.
It’s very pretty, sounds like Lauridsen to me, which is not a bad thing. It’s mixed meter all over the place though, so I’m going to be cuing my part to death, the entrances are not obvious. It’s neither overly difficult or particularly easy. We’ll see how it goes!
What else? I’ve been doing Scary October, watching some appropriate movies and TV shows. I thought M3gan 2.0 was hilarious. A Quiet Place 2 wasn’t as gripping as I thought it would be, but I liked it. Enjoying Twilight Zone and have just gotten the DVD of the first season of The Last of Us, mostly to see that famous episode with Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett, but I’ll probably like all of it. Oo, I tried to watch Hereditary this weekend, and loved it up to a point that there’s a very shocking death and I just went, “nope, not tonight” and turned it off. I’ll have to give it another shot later.
I’ve read some really great books lately (and some not-great ones too), mostly romance novels. I really like Alexis Hall, mostly, and I just read 10 Things That Never Happened. It’s a completely absurd premise, but very funny and very touching. I was struck very much with “I want to write books like this“. I also read a very entertaining take on the ‘a British prince is gay and falls in love with someone’ trope. This one was The Unlikely Heir, and again, the premise is somewhat absurd, but it was very entertaining. I’ve read enough of these that they get mixed up in my head (and at least two of them have a queen with the same name – all of these are clearly ‘alternate-universe’ Englands). I also did a reread (as an audiobook this time ) of Paul Rudnick’s Playing the Palace, which is probably the most guffaw-laden of these. (such as Great-Aunt Miriam sneaking a dinner roll into the Queen’s purse ‘for the plane’, ) Or, after Edgar and Carter use the stateroom on the private jet, the snarky gay factotum delivers this: We were awakened by the clunk of landing gear in operation and James tapping forcefully at the door, saying, without lowering his voice, “Stop groping one another, you repellent little sex rodents. We’re in England. There are laws.”
I’m also very much trying to get myself writing more. (I mean, I’m writing now, and I guess that counts, but…) I can entertain myself endlessly by preparing to write – noting writing prompts, reading books about how to write, taking classes – but actual writing? But I’m rereading/listening to the audiobook of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird now, and it’s not only hilarious, but inspirational. Maybe if I could just sit down and babble into a keyboard for fifteen minutes a day, it would be more than I’m doing now.
The Toast Point Page 