Eat your Wheaties
Mar. 22nd, 2004 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xaara"If you can't play the timpani any louder than that we'll have to get someone else to do it!" the junior orchestra conductor yelled at me across the stage of the Lincoln Theater. "You have to eat your Wheaties!"
Considering that I was in fact too nauseous to think about food and didn't feel in the mood to be yelled at, I shouted back, "I've never eaten Wheaties in my life and don't intend to start now."
He went off grumbling, but the incident served to alleviate some of the nervous tension that accumulated before the vaguely disastrous concert of Sunday night. As for the actual concert, the first violins rushed everything; the clarinet played the opening bars of Rhapsody in Blue passably, if not well; Mike, a fellow percussionist rushed so incredibly much during the 3/4 portion of Sabre Dance that I thought I wouldn't be able to play my xylophone to match the train-wreck pace of the rest of the orchestra.
And Maestro, our conductor, cut a page out of Romeo & Juliet a half-hour before the performance. Of course, the person who told me this (who shall remain anonymous but who has been told loudly and explicitly that I shall forever despise his listening skills) failed to describe the actual changes. "Maestro cut seven measures out of section K and removed L altogether," he said, nodding as I marked the appropriate changes on my music. "There you go."
So there I was, lounging in the wings as the orchestra played a long section without percussion, when Maestro shot me a panicked look and waved me an unmistakable cue. I, of course, jumped onstage and improvised a good ten measures before I figured out exactly where we were. I finished the piece well, but went searching for what I had missed afterward. It turned out that Maestro hadn't cut seven measures; he had cut all but seven measures. So after the twenty-seven measures I had to count, I ended up twenty measures behind. I found the bad listener afterward and told him exactly what I thought of his misinformation. He apologized, I smacked him with a yarn mallet (I would've preferred a bell tree, or at least a bass drum beater, but none was at hand), and a good time was subsequently had by all. Especially during Sabre Dance, where I played the xylophone so well that it put the insufferably superior piccolo in her place.
Rhapsody in Blue was awesome. Gershwin should've written it for marimba in the first place. Janice Paulson - the marimbist - is my heroine. She makes me want to do one of two things: (a) spend the rest of my life holed up in the basement practicing, or (b) quit.
Then, after the concert, I went out with some good friends of mine who I see far too infrequently. Fortunately, none of them are very well-acquainted with classical music, so they didn't recognize the horribleness (should be a word - I know it's not) of our concert. I didn't feel it necessary to enlighten them.
I guess when it all comes down to a quick summary, I had fun.
Considering that I was in fact too nauseous to think about food and didn't feel in the mood to be yelled at, I shouted back, "I've never eaten Wheaties in my life and don't intend to start now."
He went off grumbling, but the incident served to alleviate some of the nervous tension that accumulated before the vaguely disastrous concert of Sunday night. As for the actual concert, the first violins rushed everything; the clarinet played the opening bars of Rhapsody in Blue passably, if not well; Mike, a fellow percussionist rushed so incredibly much during the 3/4 portion of Sabre Dance that I thought I wouldn't be able to play my xylophone to match the train-wreck pace of the rest of the orchestra.
And Maestro, our conductor, cut a page out of Romeo & Juliet a half-hour before the performance. Of course, the person who told me this (who shall remain anonymous but who has been told loudly and explicitly that I shall forever despise his listening skills) failed to describe the actual changes. "Maestro cut seven measures out of section K and removed L altogether," he said, nodding as I marked the appropriate changes on my music. "There you go."
So there I was, lounging in the wings as the orchestra played a long section without percussion, when Maestro shot me a panicked look and waved me an unmistakable cue. I, of course, jumped onstage and improvised a good ten measures before I figured out exactly where we were. I finished the piece well, but went searching for what I had missed afterward. It turned out that Maestro hadn't cut seven measures; he had cut all but seven measures. So after the twenty-seven measures I had to count, I ended up twenty measures behind. I found the bad listener afterward and told him exactly what I thought of his misinformation. He apologized, I smacked him with a yarn mallet (I would've preferred a bell tree, or at least a bass drum beater, but none was at hand), and a good time was subsequently had by all. Especially during Sabre Dance, where I played the xylophone so well that it put the insufferably superior piccolo in her place.
Rhapsody in Blue was awesome. Gershwin should've written it for marimba in the first place. Janice Paulson - the marimbist - is my heroine. She makes me want to do one of two things: (a) spend the rest of my life holed up in the basement practicing, or (b) quit.
Then, after the concert, I went out with some good friends of mine who I see far too infrequently. Fortunately, none of them are very well-acquainted with classical music, so they didn't recognize the horribleness (should be a word - I know it's not) of our concert. I didn't feel it necessary to enlighten them.
I guess when it all comes down to a quick summary, I had fun.
