Trust

Today is a day of rest after a very long and arduous two weeks of playing. Two weeks ago, "Annie Get Your Gun" with Leopold the Magnificent, and this last week a concert filled with waltzes led by Slava (my chosen pseudonym for him means "glory").
By the end of "Annie", I could barely bend over for the tense muscles everywhere. The prospect of attempting to do justice to the Blue Danube, Die Fledermaus and Der Rosenkavalier with three cracked fingertips, a swollen ganglion in one knuckle and a blister sitting on top of my bow stick in addition to the knots was, well...I wasn't too excited about it.
My favorite orchestra has, to be honest, never been able to play waltzes with any sort of style and grace. Even without trying to sound Viennese, our waltzes have always felt like riding a three-legged horse. It is as if no one in the group had ever danced before.
Enter Slava.......
I have a sneaking suspicion that he programmed the repertoire for this concert knowing full well that he would be teaching this new orchestra of his a thing or two about mutual trust. The notes in Danube and Fledermaus are not difficult, but giving them life is a challenge in a group of people who don't trust their leader, and who, more importantly, don't trust themselves.
Early on, some musicians grumbled that he never takes the same tempo twice, and the degree of stretch in the rubatos even less consistently. Personally, I began to enjoy this aspect of his rehearsal technique, as it kept these "simple" pieces from getting boring and tedious. It was, as it turned out, the key to learning how to trust the conductor. 
By the end of the week, we had become willing to waltz to the edge of the precipice, lean out over the 1,000 foot drop and gently swing right back to solid ground without a second thought. Slava never let us fall. He even managed to give the violas and cellos a pizzicato cue OVER HIS SHOULDER while turned away completely, facing the first violins for their own entrance. That was some fancy shootin'........Oh, and did I mention that he always conducts from memory?
The trust also went in the other direction. Our guest violin soloist performed two Mozart pieces with us, and from the first rehearsal Slava had decided that we would play it without a conductor at all. Good, old-fashioned chamber music. None of our previous conductors would have had faith enough in us to allow that, but it went without a hitch.
At this point, I have to contrast this relaxed, trusting relationship with the frenetic micromanaging that goes on in my less-favorite orchestra.
During "Annie" Leopold would constantly remind us of what number we were headed into, and what beat pattern he would be conducting, even through the last of three performances (Okay, now we're in number 14, and it's in two....Number 14, and in TWO!!). Mind you, there was absolutely no reason for this, as we had successfully run through the show without incident since the second rehearsal.
Slava talks relatively little in rehearsals, and relies on his body movements to tell us how to play something.
Leopold will talk us through every single piece, telling us where he will beat in two, where he is in four, and what the metronome marking is for each section, as the expansive waving of his hands isn't enough to clue us in.
Slava will sometimes put his arms down completely in the middle of a piece and just listen to us play until he is needed again.
Leopold will keep beating energetically no matter what, even when the orchestra has twenty measures of rest during the cadenza of a guest soloist's concerto, and will hold his arms all the way up over his head waiting for the soloist to end a fermata (either because he got there too quick or because the team just made a touchdown). Picture the Hollywood Bowl, Bugs Bunny and the Tenor, only Bugs isn't the one in control..........
Slava uses our first rehearsal of the week to run through everything, warts and all, before worrying about refining anything.
Leopold will inevitably stop us after the very first downbeat of the week because it wasn't together.

The performances this past weekend were absolutely wonderful. Both of them (and we usually refer to the first performance as our dress rehearsal) went smoothly, with the utmost in grace and sensitivity on every piece. It has been some number of years since I have felt such a sense of elation at the end of a concert, and what a remarkable feeling it is! This is why I play.

Orchestra Psychosis

It is the middle of another rehearsal week in my favorite orchestra, which is following last week's extra-long rehearsals for a musical by my less-favorite orchestra. My neck, shoulders and lower back are all knotted up from sitting for hours in a cramped pit for "Annie, Get Your Gun", constantly being shushed by Leopold while the trumpets and saxes blast their way over the singers and any attempts at dialogue. Misprinted notes abound, but are not being noticed by our esteemed leader, who expresses no concern when the issue is mentioned. Waving his stick at the cast onstage is the only thing he is focused on, and whatever the orchestra is doing, they should be doing it alot quieter. Who cares about wrong notes? If the Broadway rental library that charged us a ridiculously huge sum to use their music thought that having the right notes was important, surely they would have fixed them long ago.
This week we are doing Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier Suite among other pieces by BOTH Strausses to emphasize the relationship between tunes by these unrelated composers....Namely, waltzing. I quite like to waltz. As a matter of fact, my better half and I met while out dancing, and it was our chemistry while waltzing (to country music, not Strauss) which first drew me to him.
Playing Rosenkavalier, however is not as fun, especially while your body is trying to recover from pit trauma. The notes are difficult enough, with key changes every three beats and tempo changes every four, and going from playing as loudly as physically possible to the exact extreme back and forth throughout the piece gives new life to the pain.
If any of us musicians were full-time performers, things might be different. Our bodies would be in better shape from regular playing, and we would sound better. Not having any symphonic gigs for a month and a half was a nice break in some ways, but it didn't do our stamina any favors. Not to mention our pocketbooks.
The life of part-time musicians is frustrating in so many ways, and unfortunately manifests in all sorts of whining......
I just had a conversation with the theater manager in which I complained about construction which was making our parking near the performance venue very challenging, and that it was annoying that the executive director gets to park right behind the backstage door. He reminded me that in most other cities, having access to parking anywhere near your venue would be a luxury. I understand the point, but because our orchestra is the lowest-paid regional orchestra in the country it makes me feel like we deserve a few perks to compensate. Complaining about something unrelated to orchestra management (like city-generated parking issues) is just displaced agression. We have alot of that.
We've also complained repeatedly to the same venue manager about the extremely cold temperatures inside the theater. The oboist has to hug her instrument next to her body to warm it up before playing it to keep it from cracking, string players need gloves to keep fingers from getting stiff between pieces and instruments in general keep going out of tune from the unacceptably cold temps.
We've had all kinds of explanations, but basically Frosticles likes it cold in his office, and we don't pay his salary. I think that someone very recently, finally put it to him this way....If a world-class soloist comes to play with us and suffers a career-ending injury due to inordinately cold surroundings, the theater is liable to get slapped with a lawsuit.
The temperatures have been better this week.........
Another issue is that our audition schedule has been in question, and musicians who are wanting to participate are none-too-happy about the direction things are heading. Our conductor wants to move auditions from the end of summer (where they've been for centuries) to the end of this spring. Trouble is, everyone who wants to audition has conflicts (mainly because most are schoolteachers who will be dealing with frantic end-of-school-year stuff), and I already have a gig that I committed to a couple of months ago. Having the summer to practice would be so much better for all of us, but apparently not for the conductor.  Is it too out of touch with reality to expect a potential employer to accommodate your life instead of their own agenda? Is it?? Really???
While I am still very pleased with our new conductor, he has a penchant for going quite fast. Our crew is used to laid-back, and having to push everything is hard to get used to. It's exhausting, frankly. During a rehearsal this week he was asked how fast he wanted a particular section of music.  He joked, "depends on if I've had alot of coffee, or a banana..." Before the next rehearsal someone put a bunch of bananas on his podium. He laughed and ate one, but it didn't slow him down any.
 

Playing With Fire

Fire has always fascinated me. It's very existence is so mystical! It isn't a solid, or a liquid, or even a gas, is it? You can see it and feel it, smell it and hear it, but still  it is almost as if it were an optical illusion. I have always wanted a fireplace so that I can sit in front of it and watch the flames dance, slowly, gracefully consuming their fuel. I must say that I am NOT a pyromaniac by any means, but I find a roaring fire quite beautiful. It's ability to both create and destroy are amazing.
The combination of light and color in general captivate the mind and inspire creativity like nothing else, I think. Paintings, sculpture and jewelry are all about using light to project certain perspective into the eye, but buildings, gardens and even culinary masterpieces also have properties of light and color designed to create a mood.
As a kid, being forced to go to church every Sunday was at least mitigated by the beautiful stained glass windows which I spent many hours studying. The shapes and intense hues enlivened by the warm morning light passing through were my own form of spiritual meditation, albeit having nothing whatsoever to do with why we were supposedly there to begin with.
I have done just a little experimenting with torch-fired enameling...enough to get a feel for the process. After thoroughly reading Linda Darty's book, "The Art of Enameling", I think I am ready to try more. The ideas are flowing through my head at a pace too fast for my skills, and I only hope that I can catch up before those ideas disappear.
Being able to fire a piece outside of a kiln and actually watch the glass frit melt in front of you is fun. I could never get into casting pieces of jewelry because half the process takes place out of sight. Any number of things can go wrong that you only discover after going through the whole schlemiel. Although I haven't yet done any kiln-firing, I think I would  feel the same about putting pieces into a closed kiln to complete the piece... I would rather be able to watch it happen.
Getting ready to begin is taking a bit longer than anticipated, as I have to sift all of my colors into various particle sizes. I only have one set of sifting screens at the moment, so I've got to wash them after each color to avoid contamination. Once that is done, I can start firing some test pieces!
Cloisonne, Plique au Jour and Champleve are all techniques which I am anxious to try. Linda's book doesn't say anything about being able to use copper wire for cloisonne, probably because it is difficult to clean oxides from the wires between firings. I am going to try it anyway, to see what happens. I also have no idea if using a product like PennyBrite to clean the copper will contaminate the glass...I wish I could contact Ms. Darty to ask...Oh well, that is what experimenting is for.
 Hopefully, I will have some photos of the first few test pieces to post next week. I want to wait on doing any firing until our current home renovation installation is done. We are welding steel stair stringers into the stairwell this week, and the torch is frequently in use. I'd rather be able to keep going once I start, without interruptions. In the meantime, I will keep sifting and sketching designs!