The weekend isn't over yet
May. 6th, 2006 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunrabLet's see. Thursday we found ourselves a primary care provider (that's "family doctor" in English). Further details about that would be boring even to me.
Then, I got a significant number of pet cages cleaned up. Of significance only to me, S, and the pets. I'm pretty sure you don't want further details about that.
Friday we played a concert in Williamsport, PA.
The Bel Air Community Band played at the Association of Concert Bands convention. S and I took the band bus, along with 40 other members of the band; the rest of the band drove up. It's about a 3 to 4 hour drive from Bel Air to there. S and I made about 3 gallons of iced tea ahead of time, and brought it, in our 1-gallon and 2-gallon beverage coolers, and paper cups, sweetener packets, and stirrers. We also brought sandwiches for our own lunch, but the tea was to share with everyone. We decided to go with wearing our concert clothes rather than carrying them and changing when we got there; we were already carrying a lot with all the tea and stuff. We grabbed front row seats in the bus, since that's where there's the most room to put large jugs of tea. This also meant that we had the best view of the road, and that we got to do a lot of chatting with the bus driver. We now know a great deal about her life. And the bus. 40 feet long, 24 tons. OK, so the drive up there took 3.5 hours, including a second stop north of Bel Air to pick up some people. Once we got to Williamsport, it took a few minutes to figure out where to unload 40+ people and their musical instruments. We had a rehearsal at 5:15 or so, after a certain amount of confusion about finding the dressing rooms to store our cases, and about rearranging the seating from the previous band's rehearsal.
After the rehearsal, we grabbed some of the inexpensive food they were selling - sandwiches and dessert, mainly - in another part of the hall - and then went to listen to the band that played before us, the Macungie Band, a 150-year-old organization from the town of the same name. They were quite good; they wore spiffy, Sousa-Band-style uniforms. Actually, all the other bands playing at this concert were from PA; we were the only band that came from out-of-state to play. (The attendees were from all over the country.) There was enough time between that concert and ours for everyone to dash from the audience to the dressing room and grab instruments, find bow ties, touch up make-up, etc. We played from 8:15 to 9:15, and if I say so myself, we were good.
No concert is perfect, but this one had very few problems. The main problem, from the point of view of the band members, was that our seating arrangement was almost entirely different from the one we use in rehearsals. The saxophones, all of us, were seated in front of the trumpets, in the center, instead of tenors in front of the trombones, on the conductor's right. (And the bari sax is usually back row, next to the tubas, and the altos are over by the clarinets, on the other side of the french horns from the tenors.) The french horns, instead of sharing a row between the tenor saxes on their left and the alto saxes on their right, were now directly in front of the saxes. This arrangement meant that suddenly I was sitting next to an alto sax, and that pretty much all I could hear was the bass drum and the trumpet section, and couldn't hear the trombones at all. Since one of the ways a band keeps together is to listen to each other, it's a bit unnerving to not be able to hear the parts one expects, and to hear instead parts one has never really been paying attention to before. This led to a bit of confusion in a couple of pieces, where for a few moments some of the brass were a beat off from others, but that happened only for a second, and wasn't really noticeable out in the audience. One other slight problem was that the stage was extremely warm, leading to sweating and uncomfortableness.
One of the pieces we played was by Patrick Burns, and we had Patrick Burns conducting us. That was popular with the audience. The last piece we played was "Joy" by Joseph Curiale, and that has such a catchy tune that as we climbed back on the bus 25 minutes later, most of the band members were still whistling or humming it. Early reports from the audience were positive, and I can't wait to hear the CD.
Our friends J (tuba player!) & B from Ohio were there, attending the whole convention. We only had a few minutes to talk with them, unfortunately, since we were jumping right back on the bus. But it was great to see them.
More people drank tea on the way home, since we were all quite warm, and tired enough to need caffeine to be sure we were still awake when we got to the parking lot in Bel Air and had to drive home. The bus made it back to Bel Air in only three hours, about 1:00 a.m. when we rolled in. I had thought the trip home from PA would be quieter but everyone was so jazzed up from the performance that if anything, there was even more talking going on. Overall, a fun trip - the ride was enjoyable; I like sitting around talking with bunches of other musicians!
Oh, hey, while I'm here: Thank you Phyllis for all your work in putting together this wonderful trip!
The ride home from Bel Air was also interesting; S and I stopped at the Broadway diner for a bite more to eat, since a sandwich at 6 p.m. was not really enough dinner. The Broadway is a 24-hour diner right off the highway, on our usual route home, and has arguably the best dessert case in Baltimore County. Things got really interesting when somebody who was apparently quite drunk, got violent and punched a stranger. There was an off-duty cop in the room, and he and the manager and someone else managed to wrestle the guy to the ground, handcuff him, and get him out of the building. They let him go out there - and then he apparently got mad in the parking lot, and they had to wrestle him away from somebody else. Never a dull moment. Then, continuing home, right after we went through the tunnel, everyone got diverted off I95 to some road we had never been on before, which went way south of where we needed to be before we could get back to loop 695. Good thing we had the GPS unit!
We arrived home around 3a.m., dropped into bed, and I woke up at about 3 this afternoon (1500 for you Europeans). So I can't say as I got anything accomplished today. Tomorrow, we play the same music in a concert in Bel Air.
Coming soon: a pointless digression about state fairs, occasioned by reading about the Finnish version of Funnel Cake.
Then, I got a significant number of pet cages cleaned up. Of significance only to me, S, and the pets. I'm pretty sure you don't want further details about that.
Friday we played a concert in Williamsport, PA.
The Bel Air Community Band played at the Association of Concert Bands convention. S and I took the band bus, along with 40 other members of the band; the rest of the band drove up. It's about a 3 to 4 hour drive from Bel Air to there. S and I made about 3 gallons of iced tea ahead of time, and brought it, in our 1-gallon and 2-gallon beverage coolers, and paper cups, sweetener packets, and stirrers. We also brought sandwiches for our own lunch, but the tea was to share with everyone. We decided to go with wearing our concert clothes rather than carrying them and changing when we got there; we were already carrying a lot with all the tea and stuff. We grabbed front row seats in the bus, since that's where there's the most room to put large jugs of tea. This also meant that we had the best view of the road, and that we got to do a lot of chatting with the bus driver. We now know a great deal about her life. And the bus. 40 feet long, 24 tons. OK, so the drive up there took 3.5 hours, including a second stop north of Bel Air to pick up some people. Once we got to Williamsport, it took a few minutes to figure out where to unload 40+ people and their musical instruments. We had a rehearsal at 5:15 or so, after a certain amount of confusion about finding the dressing rooms to store our cases, and about rearranging the seating from the previous band's rehearsal.
After the rehearsal, we grabbed some of the inexpensive food they were selling - sandwiches and dessert, mainly - in another part of the hall - and then went to listen to the band that played before us, the Macungie Band, a 150-year-old organization from the town of the same name. They were quite good; they wore spiffy, Sousa-Band-style uniforms. Actually, all the other bands playing at this concert were from PA; we were the only band that came from out-of-state to play. (The attendees were from all over the country.) There was enough time between that concert and ours for everyone to dash from the audience to the dressing room and grab instruments, find bow ties, touch up make-up, etc. We played from 8:15 to 9:15, and if I say so myself, we were good.
No concert is perfect, but this one had very few problems. The main problem, from the point of view of the band members, was that our seating arrangement was almost entirely different from the one we use in rehearsals. The saxophones, all of us, were seated in front of the trumpets, in the center, instead of tenors in front of the trombones, on the conductor's right. (And the bari sax is usually back row, next to the tubas, and the altos are over by the clarinets, on the other side of the french horns from the tenors.) The french horns, instead of sharing a row between the tenor saxes on their left and the alto saxes on their right, were now directly in front of the saxes. This arrangement meant that suddenly I was sitting next to an alto sax, and that pretty much all I could hear was the bass drum and the trumpet section, and couldn't hear the trombones at all. Since one of the ways a band keeps together is to listen to each other, it's a bit unnerving to not be able to hear the parts one expects, and to hear instead parts one has never really been paying attention to before. This led to a bit of confusion in a couple of pieces, where for a few moments some of the brass were a beat off from others, but that happened only for a second, and wasn't really noticeable out in the audience. One other slight problem was that the stage was extremely warm, leading to sweating and uncomfortableness.
One of the pieces we played was by Patrick Burns, and we had Patrick Burns conducting us. That was popular with the audience. The last piece we played was "Joy" by Joseph Curiale, and that has such a catchy tune that as we climbed back on the bus 25 minutes later, most of the band members were still whistling or humming it. Early reports from the audience were positive, and I can't wait to hear the CD.
Our friends J (tuba player!) & B from Ohio were there, attending the whole convention. We only had a few minutes to talk with them, unfortunately, since we were jumping right back on the bus. But it was great to see them.
More people drank tea on the way home, since we were all quite warm, and tired enough to need caffeine to be sure we were still awake when we got to the parking lot in Bel Air and had to drive home. The bus made it back to Bel Air in only three hours, about 1:00 a.m. when we rolled in. I had thought the trip home from PA would be quieter but everyone was so jazzed up from the performance that if anything, there was even more talking going on. Overall, a fun trip - the ride was enjoyable; I like sitting around talking with bunches of other musicians!
Oh, hey, while I'm here: Thank you Phyllis for all your work in putting together this wonderful trip!
The ride home from Bel Air was also interesting; S and I stopped at the Broadway diner for a bite more to eat, since a sandwich at 6 p.m. was not really enough dinner. The Broadway is a 24-hour diner right off the highway, on our usual route home, and has arguably the best dessert case in Baltimore County. Things got really interesting when somebody who was apparently quite drunk, got violent and punched a stranger. There was an off-duty cop in the room, and he and the manager and someone else managed to wrestle the guy to the ground, handcuff him, and get him out of the building. They let him go out there - and then he apparently got mad in the parking lot, and they had to wrestle him away from somebody else. Never a dull moment. Then, continuing home, right after we went through the tunnel, everyone got diverted off I95 to some road we had never been on before, which went way south of where we needed to be before we could get back to loop 695. Good thing we had the GPS unit!
We arrived home around 3a.m., dropped into bed, and I woke up at about 3 this afternoon (1500 for you Europeans). So I can't say as I got anything accomplished today. Tomorrow, we play the same music in a concert in Bel Air.
Coming soon: a pointless digression about state fairs, occasioned by reading about the Finnish version of Funnel Cake.
