No promises!: THAT was interesting

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

THAT was interesting

Well then. The Spring Concert was last night, and I conducted one of the pieces. It was quite a learning experience. This was not my first time CONDUCTING, but it was my first experience doing so in front of a crowd. My biggest fear was falling off the podium, but we ended up not using it...that's one irrational fear put to rest.

Things started out on an unpredictable note; the second row filed in wrong and ended up backward. Yes, backward. The 1st Clarinets were on the RIGHT side of the set, between the flutes and the trombones...LIGHT years away from the rest of the clarinets. I had to adjust my cues on the fly as I was used to looking over to the left for them, and they weren't THERE anymore.

I made it past the hard part (what I THOUGHT was the hard part) and started to calm down a little...then I hear a metallic "CLANG!!!" from the middle of the chairs. I look up and see a young lady from the trombone section staring up at me in a panic, holding half a trombone. Um, wha? The slide had, well, slid off and under the chair in front of her. That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Not only did she drop her slide, but it managed to get away from her.

Shortly after this, the low brass and horns end up about 2 beats behind. Besides this being WRONG, I had two major issues with this: 1) they didn't even NOTICE they were off, and 2) nobody would friggin look up at me so I could communicate (through a complex series of glares, eyebrow raising, scowls, and hisses under my breath) that THEY WERE NOT IN THE RIGHT PLACE. Bah. The flutes, bless every one of their little hearts, being right underneath me were all staring straight at me looking like, "OHCRAPWHATDOWEDO?!" It's amazing how much communication can take place without ever speaking, no? They all dropped out after a trill (it sounded like it was as written in) and jumped back in a few beats behind with everyone else. It was magnificent.

The last issue was premature clapping on the part of the audience; the slow part came to an end and I cut them off, leaving my arms up as we were just going to start up again. I'd say there was maybe 4 or 5 seconds between the cut off and counting off the next part. The parents started clapping about 3 seconds after, and I actually saw a couple of the freshmen flutes put their horns down. Like they were finished playing! I was HORRIFIED that their concentration was blown and they wouldn't be able to come in and I'd have to START OVER. They managed to recover...I very nearly didn't. Lord, that was rough.

I managed not to embarrass myself (too badly). TJ, Jen, Cam, and my Dad & Phyllis were there to witness the spectacle. The biggest concert music hit was the Great Locomotive Chase by Robert Smith. (You'll have to scroll down to find the piece-that was the best, most complete recording of the piece I could find.) The kids H A T E D that piece. Whined and bitched about the sound effects and such, but as we TOLD them over and over again, it was the biggest hit of the night. The parents LOVED it.

Then they played the first two numbers of next year's halftime show, and the ROOF practically fell in. The crowd LOVED it. I knew they would, though-they're PARENTS. The kids could play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and the parents would think it's stupendous. That's their job. I just hope it will keep the energy up so that the kids can impress the judges, KWIM?

OK, I need to go get dinner started, but I wanted to leave my impressions of yesterday before any of the embarrassing details slipped away. :)

posted by Jen @ 4:21 PM

2 Comments:

At 10:40 PM, Anonymous said…

AWESOME!!!! still giggling over the trombone...
Dawn
At 12:07 AM, Teresa said…

I loved the story! Quite entertaining! Congrats on the 5.5 loss, BTW. They just fixed my work computer so the internet works again, so I can just now comment. Awesome job, though!

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