I thought I’d write a coherent account, instead of throwing you
dribs and drabs like I did in December. The previously posted
information is all in this post, except that I posted the picture later.
It was one of the nicest spaces we’ve played in. We’ve played
there twice before, but because it’s an art gallery, and they
put the art in different places for each exhibition, we end up
performing in different spots. It’s an old factory building
with stone walls and tile floors and high ceilings, so it’s
always fairly live, but this was an ideal spot for our
instruments. I played one note on the serpent and said, “O,
good, the serpent likes this space,” but the recorders,
especially my Prescott transitional soprano, liked it even
better.
We had about 25 people, which was good considering how short a
lead time we had for publicity after scheduling it. They seemed
to enjoy it, and stayed around for crackers and cheese afterwards
and asked questions about the instruments and the music. There
were a few people we knew, but it looked like most of them were
people who come to events at the gallery.
The opening piece was We
be three poor Mariners. We’ve been using that as a
beginning piece, as have at least two other groups I’ve heard play
it in the last 5 years. It doesn’t make large technical demands,
and is a good warmup for the harder pieces later, and both
performers and audience enjoy it. This is the current state of
the solo serpent playing; not as good as I wish it were, but
better than it’s been in the past. The recorder playing on the
middle verse was a debut recorder performance by someone who is
usually a singer.
We had to take the two French drinking songs off the program in
December to keep the length under an hour, so we put them back for
this. It was a mistake in the case of Changeons
Propos, so I won’t inflict the recording on you, but Quand
je Bois was good except for the beginning.
We’ve concentrated on the Weelkes Aires and Phantasticke
Spirits about spring and birds singing because we
usually do them at the Walk for Hunger in May,
but both of the ones that made it onto this program were
successful. Here’s Strike
it up, Tabor.
I’ve always wanted to do whole concerts full of the Morley
Canzonets, and this half concert was the best chance I’ve had so
far. They went well; here are some of the better ones:
- La
Girandola (two soprano recorders) - I
should for Grief and Anguish
(alto and mezzo-soprano voices) - La Sirena (G alto recorder and
5-stringed fiddle) - La
Caccia (Soprano and Tenor recorders)
As I was making up this list of greatest hits, I realized that
none of the three-voice ones are on it. They’re about as easy
to sightread as the two-voice ones, but at least twice as
difficult to perform, and while none of the performances was
bad, they all had at least one section where somebody wasn’t
quite on the same beat as the other two people. Cruel
you pull away too soon has the shortest such
section.
The ovation at the end definitely justified an encore, so we
sang He
that will an alehouse keep. Some of the audience
joined in.
LayMusic.org 