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.