Report on the March 21 meeting

[cantabile] Report on the March 21 meeting

We played:

• Campian, Faine would I wed a faire yong man
• Drinking songs group:
  • Quand je bois
  • Vignons, vingons
  • Changeons propos
  • Vive la serpe
• Shape note group:
  • Millennium
  • Haverhill
  • Night Thought (all 11 verses)
  • Friendship
• Gibbons, Now each flowry bancke of May
• He that will an alehouse keep

Schedule

We have a busy performing schedule between now and July 22.

• Sunday, May 7, Walk for Hunger. We’ll be playing a program
  about an hour long, probably doing it twice with some other
  group playing in between while we take a break. The choice of
  material is up to us, but we’re playing outdoors for people who
  are walking for 22 miles, so upbeat and uncomplicated tend to
  work better than some of the other things we do. But we’ll use
  as much as we can from the June and July programs.
• Wednesday, June 21, program for the Society for the study of
  Dreams in Bridgewater, MA. We’ll be playing for about an hour,
  with the music as closely related to dreams in some way as
  possible. The program will probably be like the Lowell program,
  with big band sets at the beginning and end, and some solo and
  small group performances in the middle.

• Saturday, July 22. Ingalls
  concert, Newbury, Vermont. It’s too early for us to need a
  musical commitment, but it’s an area with a lot of tourists at
  that time of year, so if you think you might want to do it, and
  might not want to drive back home after a possibly very long
  concert, you might want to think about reserving a hotel room.
  There are a large number of groups on the program, so I would
  expect that we’ll be playing at most a 20 minute set, and
  possibly as little as 10 minutes. But there’s an
  all-day Singing before the concert.

By April 11, we need to know who will be singing at the Walk for
Hunger. The May 2, and the April 25 meetings
will be limited to and compulsory for those people. The April
11 and 18 meetings will be open to other people, especially
people who want to play the June and July gigs, but we will be
working exclusively on the music for the May program.

So the schedule is:

• March 25, regular dropin meeting
• April 2, regular dropin meeting
• April 11, dropin meeting working on Walk for hunger
  program
• April 18, dropin meeting working on Walk for hunger
  program
• April 25, Walk for Hunger performers only
• May 2, Walk for Hunger performers only

If you want to perform and can’t make both the April 25 and May 2
meetings, we should discuss how well you know the music, and
whether there are pieces you shouldn’t play on.

If there are pieces you’d like to play at the Walk for Hunger that
I didn’t mention last
week, you should mention them as soon as possible.

After the Walk for Hunger, we’ll probably have two or three dropin
meetings and then a similar schedule for the June gig. Then one
or two dropin meetings and a similar schedule for July.

Who should perform

We had this kind of performing schedule last Fall, and there were
some management problems. Thinking over why this was, I decided
it was because people hadn’t really thought about what has to
happen when we go from being a dropin group to being a serious
performing group. Back when we used to be a dropin performing
group, this transformation wasn’t as radical, but we now have a
core group of people who are capable of performing on a pretty
high level, so we really need everyone who plays with us to have
the kind of discipline (for those few weeks) that serious
performing groups have.

When we’re being a dropin group, people come when they can, we
don’t worry about people coming late or leaving early, we tell
jokes in the middle of rehearsal, we play music that we aren’t
capable of performing in public, and we don’t worry about it if we
end up spending some time printing or finding music people want
to play. We are a stronger group because we do this, and our
programs are much better than they would be if we didn’t have
this informal environment for finding out what music we want to
play together.

When we perform, we are making a commitment to both the audience
and the people we play with. This doesn’t mean we have to meet
any particular standard of technical excellence, but it does
mean that we have to do our best to know the music. This means
treating both the performing and the rehearsing times as
precious resources. So you should arrive at rehearsals on time
with your music in order. If you need help getting music
printed, you should let me know well before the rehearsal. You
should arrive at the performance well before the start time, and
if you need anyone else to bring something for you, you should
make sure they know about it. You should be able to play or
sing your own part confidently by yourself.

The Walk for Hunger in particular is a really good performing
opportunity — has anyone else offered you a chance to play for
more than 20,000 people? And I really want everyone who would
enjoy it to do it, but you shouldn’t sign up for it if you
can’t make the same commitment that the other performers are
making.

---

Laura Conrad

Last modified: Wed Mar 22 11:02:03 EST 2006