A sticky situation at orchestra

Maestro: (entering the high school band room where our pops orchestra practices) "It feels like a sauna in here."

It was so hot and humid you could taste it. And it tasted like "school." The oscillating fan didn't help much except to occasionally blow the sheet music off the stand.

But the real problem was that I couldn't make my left hand slide up and down the fingerboard. My thumb was practically glued to the neck and my fingers were stuck in "first." Shifting became a nightmare.

Was it the heat? An accumulation of rosin? Contact with the unidentified sticky substance lurking on my music stand? Soap residue because I rushed and didn't rinse my hands adequately in the scary pitch black (now that "school-was-out-for-summer") girls' room.

Back in the band room I desperately tried pouring some of my Poland Spring over my left hand, but that didn't help much. It got a little better after the first hour of playing, but by then we'd already run the program in preparation for our outdoor concert next week.

Fortunately I was able to clean the fingerboard and neck when I got home, and it all feels normal now. I will most definitely be more disciplined about cleaning my cello after each practice session from now on. I'm also going to make sure I'm better prepared to clean everything off in the band room when necessary.

Counting night and day

Two weeks ago I was thrilled when our music librarian, C placed a copy of Cole Porter's Night and Day on my music stand.
Me: "Yesssss! My favorite song in the whole world."
C: (smirking, as though I was being sarcastic) "Really??"

We didn't have time to sight read it that night at rehearsal, but I eagerly anticipated playing it at home as soon as possible. The next morning I played the notes. What? ... This accompanies Night and Day? Had I lost all sense of musical intuition? I couldn't even imagine where the melody was going to fit in. It was just a bunch of notes. But I practiced over and over, carefully counting the indicated slow tempo in cut time with the hope that it would make sense in the grand scheme.

Aha! Hooray! Two days later I discovered 4 measures of melody hiding between some bass notes. It was beginning to make some sense. I couldn't wait for rehearsal night. But when the time came it didn't work out as I'd expected. I became lost right there at the very spot where the cellos had 4 measures of melody. Frustration. It happened every time we repeated it. I was always a measure ahead of where I supposed to be. OK ... another week of really careful practice. And counting. Careful counting. I had to make this work.

rehearsal last night
Same thing. As we were working on it I'd abandoned all hope of getting it right last night and resolved to practice it more at home.
Maestro: "OK we're gonna take it again at E. That's measure 37 for those of you who numbered your measures." (Maestro is a stickler about numbering measures)
Me: "But I have E numbered as measure 36"
Stand partner: "Yes, measure 36"
Maestro: "No! ... E is measure 37"
Me: (thinking) Oh great, not only can't I count the rhythm, now I can't even count the number of measures. "OK, I probably numbered it wrong."

But I was adamant about finding out where I'd made the numbering mistake, so I continued asking Maestro to match numbers and letters to see where I went wrong. We pinpointed it to somewhere between rehearsal letters D and E ... the very same place where I kept getting ahead of the rest of the orchestra. Epiphany! There was a mistake in the cello part. An omitted measure.

Maestro grabs my music, compares it to the score and then instructs the cello section to insert a measure with a whole note. Problem solved. Actually, two problems solved. Hallelujah!

Horror movie music

We recorded music for a horror movie!

Flashback: In early May, after our Spring Concert was successfully completed, we received our folders of music for the upcoming 4th of July concert. Included in the folders were 3 original pieces composed by Maestro S. He went on to explain how he'd written these for a friend who'd written an independent, small-budget horror movie, and that he wanted to know how we all felt about learning the pieces and then recording them for the movie.

After the initial shock ("Eeeeek. Is this a reflection of our sound? You mean we evoke horror???") the collective sentiment was "Hey, it looks easy enough ... Sure ... Why not." The only real drawback, and really not such a big deal, was that our patriotic repertoire would have to take a back seat for a while.

Chromatic runs, slides, and some dissonance gave the music an eerie, scary edge, perfect for depicting the "death-trap" haunted house that Maestro said was the focus of the movie. The chromatic passages presented a challenge but after some diligent practice both with and without the tuner, I was able to get to the point where I felt confident and ready to record.

The recording session last week was intense and focused, but unlike a performance, we didn't have to get it right the first time. Fortunately we could repeat the pieces for as long as it took to get them right, playing the music in small chunks with several takes to allow for editing. Maestro seemed pleased when we finished and thanked us all. I'm hoping we get to hear it soon ... maybe at tonight's rehearsal ... unless perhaps it's a big secret until the movie is finished.

My husband and I have been having fun speculating: Will we get invited to a private screening, like for "Cleaver" (think "Sopranos" here) A cast party? Hollywood? Will there be more offers? Will we be the next "Boston Pops"? Will we all become rich and famous?