The All-New Bunrab

The concert went OK, although I made an error in one piece, and in another piece I didn't make an error but the trombones who were supposed to be playing with me got totally lost. However, both things got pulled back together, and the conductor feels that the audience didn't notice anything wrong.

I blame part of it on the set-up: for some weird reason, after rehearsing with a set-up that has our row as alto sax-tenor sax-bari sax-euphoniums-french horns-bass clarinets-second clarinets, today's seating got rearranged to: saxophones-cornets-trumpets-euphoniums-bass clarinets-2nd clar. So I had the first cornet, a part I don't normally pay much attention to, right next to me - and the french horns right in front of me. Now, granted, mostly one follows the conductor and one's own part, but I think we all get other cues from glancing at the parts of the players next to us, to note that they come in two bars before letter A, for example, as a guide to our own counting, and we also see the people next to us lifting their instruments back up after rests and inhaling before the start of a phrase, and all of those are cues that we do the same or that we come in one bar later or whatever. So, when those things change radically, although we still have the conductor and our parts, other cues sound "off" and we wonder whether we're in the right place - and that wondering causes split-second late entrances or needing a full bar before the tempo becomes stable.

We drove back coming north on Rt 29 rather than getting on the interstate, so that we went through some new scenery. The foliage is absolutely beautiful this weekend. It was a great drive. Would have made a terrific bike ride, if a tuba and a baritone sax would fit on bikes. As it happens, though, it was just as well we didn't use bikes, because it started raining when we got close to home, after stopping for a snack. We ate at Panera, and as we were finding a table, I spotted someone writing in a notebook, with his table stacked with books on critical thinking and analyzing arguments. So of course I asked... he turned out to be a sociology major at UMB, and we chatted; I gave him the URL for the Bureau of Labor Standards website. He's working on a paper on poverty, and while many people would think to hit up the Census Bureau website for statistics, and some would also think of the IRS website, I don't think that most non-accountants have ever heard of the BLS, let alone know what sort of data they have on there about income and employment rates in various professions, unemployment, demographics, etc. So he'll have source material other people don't. I also told him how to export their data files to Excel and make some cool graphs to spiff up the paper. And finally as a tangent, told him about Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel which he had not heard of, and which I would think every sociology major MUST read! Yes, BunRab cannot resist lecturing college students. It's in my blood. Sigh.