Plans for May 23 meeting

[cantabile] Plans for the May 23 meeting

Schedule

Once we start working on a new program, the dropin people seem to
abandon us even when we say we’re happy to have their help.
This is a problem, because not all the people who want to
perform start coming all the time. So last week we had a couple
of recorder pieces we would have liked to try, but we didn’t
have 4 recorder players to try them with.

So here’s the schedule from now to the next performance. All
rehearsals start at 7:45.

• May 23, dropins welcome but mostly working on music for June
  21.
• May 30, dropins welcome but mostly working on music for June
  21.
• June 6, rehearsal for June 21 performers
• June 13, rehearsal for June 21 performers
• June 20, rehearsal for June 21 performers
• Wednesday, June 21, Performance. We will be playing from 7:30 until
  9. I’m requesting that all performers arrive at the site at 7
  PM. There will be a break in the middle of the performance for
  the presentation of some awards, so we’ll only be playing for an
  hour or so.

For the performers’ rehearsals,
everyone should arrive in time to set up so that the actual
rehearsal can start at 7:45. For most people this seems to mean
about 7:30. If people are actually arriving ready to start at
7:45, we could start off with a vocal warmup, which I think
would improve both our sound and our comfort level on pieces
that are at the edge of our ranges.

One of the performer’s rehearsals is likely to be coached by John
Tyson.

There are directions to the performance venue and links to public transportation information
on the Conference site.

Performer signup

So far, we have 4 people officially signed up for the June 21
performance. I need to know who’s playing by the end of this
week, so that we can start assigning parts and constructing a
real playlist.

We did much better on taking the Walk for Hunger seriously than
we’ve done the previous few performances. But there’s still
room for improvement, even on the easy part of arriving at
rehearsals and performances on time and ready to play. We’ve
scheduled more unfamiliar music for this one than usual, so
please don’t sign up unless you plan to make most of the
rehearsals between now and then and to make the performers’
rehearsals and the performance on time.

One of the encouraging things about the Walk for Hunger performance
was how much better the performance was than the last
rehearsal. This means that when people want to, they can work
on their own to improve the weaknesses in their individual
parts. Now let’s see if we can do that work before the final
rehearsals, so that we can start working seriously on what we
sound like when we all know what’s coming next.

Music planning

I’ve been recording most of my planning in the wiki. If you’re
playing, you’re welcome to help.

I have a script that will print a notebook of all the music in the
wiki playlist. If you want me to run it for you, let me know. I don’t promise that we won’t do a lot of adding, subtracting, and rearranging this notebook, though.

This week, Stuart won’t be able to come, so I thought it would be a
good week to work out some recorder arrangements. One piece
that might be fun to play with is Susato’s
Ronde V, which I transposed for Aldo’s Junior High band into
parts for Bb, Eb, F, and G transposing instruments. This way,
we can stick people on instruments with fingerings they haven’t
learned.

If you look at the playlist, you will see that there are several
Dowlands that we haven’t done very often, so we really do have
to run those again and see which we think we can play in public
in less than a month.

---

Laura Conrad

Last modified: Mon May 22 11:36:30 EDT 2006