mostly about music
Sep. 20th, 2005 01:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunrabTo catch up on what we've been doing lately:
Saturday we had lunch with the "Mature Mensans" discussion group. The usual Mensa thing - 12 people at the table, approximately 13 different conversations going on, almost none of them even faintly related to the original proposed discussion topic.
Sunday: as a fund-raiser for the Bel Air Community Band, the band had a booth selling soda at the Bel Air Arts Festival. S and I worked the 11 to 1:00 shift, and we sold out of soda by the end of our shift (the booth was supposed to stay open till 3:00) because it was warmer than expected. Still 10 degrees cooler than Texas, but warmer than it usually is here at this time of year. Anyway, it was fun doing a group project, and we saw a little bit of the festival - lots of crafts and artisan booths, the entire range of performing groups from high school bands to polka groups with 80-year old geezers, and stuff like that. Then we came home and took a nap, so that we could head out to Alexandria, VA, to see Barrage. We had purchased the tickets for Barrage before we knew it would be the same day as the Arts Festival; otherwise we would have been performing with the BACB at the Festival. ANyhoo, the drive to Alexandria is only about an hour when there's no traffic on the DC Beltway. The performance was at the Birchmere Club, a nice setting, more of a supper theater almost than a concert hall. People sit at tables and order food and drinks. We had the blueberry-peach-gingersnap crisp dessert special (before dinner!) and it was quite tasty. Barrage is a fiddle group, which is only faintly describing it. Mix large parts of Celtic music and pre-WW2 swing with some scoops of Grateful Dead and Cirque du Soleil, and you've got the general idea - 7 fiddles, guitar and bass, 2 percussionists with quite an assortment of percussion including synthesizer, bodhran, and some odd Asian chimes. The fiddlers dance, run around, and leap in the air while playing. It's quite a performance. We loved it. Bought the latest CD and DVD, plus I bought the 2 books of sheet music they now have out, for my friend Sally (see earlier post about Ceiligh group in Phila.; Sally plays fiddle with a couple of Celtic groups) for Chanukah. Got them autographed by everyone in the group, too.
Tonight was band rehearsal in Bel Air. I was sort of surprised that a lot of people weren't that familiar with the Vaughn Williams Folk Song Suite. We're prepping Christmas stuff along with general concert stuff; the next concert for that group is December.
Last week, at the Montgomery Village Community Band rehearsal, the sax section leader finally decided to mention to the conductor that the regular bari sax player would be gone until December. As Gordon was rather expecting a bari sax when he chose the music, he was a little dismayed, so I got drafted to play bari, inasmuch as I have one, old and cranky as it is. Mind you, the concert is October 2. So I have 2 weeks to rehearse music I've never played the bari parts to before. Then, on top of that, Irwin the section leader had left the bari sax music at home rather than bringing it back to put back in the music library, so he couldn't even give me the folder to take home and practice. I twisted his arm, and he agreed to meet me Friday in Olney, about halfway between where he lives and where we live, and give me the folder. So, after that extra 50 mile round trip, at least I was able to start looking at the music, and even practice some. I'll do some more practice tomorrow and Wednesday during the day, before rehearsal. I really have got to get some repairs done on the horn!! It's a 1955 King Zephyr, with a short neck with a double sleeve (meaningless to anyone not intimately familiar with the construction of baritone saxophones) and the sleeve was badly repaired at some point in the past, and the whole neck has been through the wringer, it seems like, so it's difficult to keep the neck seated on the horn and the mouthpiece seated on the neck. Not impossible, but difficult.
For the non-musicians amongst you this has been an entirely pointless post, hasn't it?
Saturday we had lunch with the "Mature Mensans" discussion group. The usual Mensa thing - 12 people at the table, approximately 13 different conversations going on, almost none of them even faintly related to the original proposed discussion topic.
Sunday: as a fund-raiser for the Bel Air Community Band, the band had a booth selling soda at the Bel Air Arts Festival. S and I worked the 11 to 1:00 shift, and we sold out of soda by the end of our shift (the booth was supposed to stay open till 3:00) because it was warmer than expected. Still 10 degrees cooler than Texas, but warmer than it usually is here at this time of year. Anyway, it was fun doing a group project, and we saw a little bit of the festival - lots of crafts and artisan booths, the entire range of performing groups from high school bands to polka groups with 80-year old geezers, and stuff like that. Then we came home and took a nap, so that we could head out to Alexandria, VA, to see Barrage. We had purchased the tickets for Barrage before we knew it would be the same day as the Arts Festival; otherwise we would have been performing with the BACB at the Festival. ANyhoo, the drive to Alexandria is only about an hour when there's no traffic on the DC Beltway. The performance was at the Birchmere Club, a nice setting, more of a supper theater almost than a concert hall. People sit at tables and order food and drinks. We had the blueberry-peach-gingersnap crisp dessert special (before dinner!) and it was quite tasty. Barrage is a fiddle group, which is only faintly describing it. Mix large parts of Celtic music and pre-WW2 swing with some scoops of Grateful Dead and Cirque du Soleil, and you've got the general idea - 7 fiddles, guitar and bass, 2 percussionists with quite an assortment of percussion including synthesizer, bodhran, and some odd Asian chimes. The fiddlers dance, run around, and leap in the air while playing. It's quite a performance. We loved it. Bought the latest CD and DVD, plus I bought the 2 books of sheet music they now have out, for my friend Sally (see earlier post about Ceiligh group in Phila.; Sally plays fiddle with a couple of Celtic groups) for Chanukah. Got them autographed by everyone in the group, too.
Tonight was band rehearsal in Bel Air. I was sort of surprised that a lot of people weren't that familiar with the Vaughn Williams Folk Song Suite. We're prepping Christmas stuff along with general concert stuff; the next concert for that group is December.
Last week, at the Montgomery Village Community Band rehearsal, the sax section leader finally decided to mention to the conductor that the regular bari sax player would be gone until December. As Gordon was rather expecting a bari sax when he chose the music, he was a little dismayed, so I got drafted to play bari, inasmuch as I have one, old and cranky as it is. Mind you, the concert is October 2. So I have 2 weeks to rehearse music I've never played the bari parts to before. Then, on top of that, Irwin the section leader had left the bari sax music at home rather than bringing it back to put back in the music library, so he couldn't even give me the folder to take home and practice. I twisted his arm, and he agreed to meet me Friday in Olney, about halfway between where he lives and where we live, and give me the folder. So, after that extra 50 mile round trip, at least I was able to start looking at the music, and even practice some. I'll do some more practice tomorrow and Wednesday during the day, before rehearsal. I really have got to get some repairs done on the horn!! It's a 1955 King Zephyr, with a short neck with a double sleeve (meaningless to anyone not intimately familiar with the construction of baritone saxophones) and the sleeve was badly repaired at some point in the past, and the whole neck has been through the wringer, it seems like, so it's difficult to keep the neck seated on the horn and the mouthpiece seated on the neck. Not impossible, but difficult.
For the non-musicians amongst you this has been an entirely pointless post, hasn't it?
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-20 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-20 05:35 pm (UTC)Me, the bigger the better - I got to try a contrabass at Midwest in Chicago a few years ago, and was able to play several bars of "The Eyes of Texas" on it before running out of steam. There was a woman in line to try behind me, she was a grad student in sax performance on the alto, she couldn't get a squeak out of it. I guess it's not always a bad thing when people tell me I'm full of hot air. I lust after that contra, but it costs around $40K.... and what the hell would I do with it?
I tried a soprano once, on the other hand, and got one sort of squeaky noise out of it, couldn't tighten up enough to play it. I'll bet you could.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-20 04:36 pm (UTC)(I've been thinking of taking up a stringed instrument, but I really need to get my crochet going again and do a bit of sketching before i can justify picking up an entirely new hobby.)
no subject
Date: 2005-09-20 05:36 pm (UTC)Mandos
Date: 2006-04-22 07:44 pm (UTC)Cavia
no subject
Date: 2006-04-23 03:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-23 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-24 02:56 am (UTC)Not Memorial Day weekend; no one in their right mind wants to be on the interstate highway system that weekend. But on the 13th, there's a brunch and crafts show at the zoo that might be fun, or on the 21st, I think we're playing a concert; you could get to hear us. You could drive over on a Friday after Rob gets off work, get here in time for supper, and then leave on Sunday after the concert, if it's that weekend, or just in the afternoon sometime, if it's the weekend of the 13th, and still be home in time to rest before going to work Monday...
no subject
Date: 2006-04-24 03:28 pm (UTC)