I just spent the last two hours at an orchestra rehearsal, getting ready for the Labor Day Concert next Sunday. This concert will be at the same adorable, quaint park the summer band performed in, but the feel will be entirely different.
People will still bring their lawn chairs, and babies will still cry (I have about this much patience for crying babies!), but it's less of a carnival. It's more of a performance--with the conductor wearing a white tux, or sometimes an elaborate vest, if it's a little hot. Our stands are all the same with lights attached for when the sun goes down.
When the band plays, it's a grab bag of stands--whatever people choose to drag in--metal, black, twisted, rusty, whatever. No lights, and defintely no tux on the director. We prefer sweaty t-shirts for band.
Anyway, back to the orchestra. It's a pops concert, which is never my favorite, but it's never so difficult that I chew off a nail with each rehearsal. The only piece on the program that really speaks to me is Brahm's 4th symphony. It's on the program for the October concert, so as a teaser, we're doing the 3rd movement for Labor Day. I'm playing 3rd horn this week, which offers some sweet little solos*, but in the fall, I assume I'll be moved back down to 4th. No solos, but plenty of base clef--yea :/
*I get a little nervous when I play with this group because there are some darn good musicians, and I'm a novice, relatively. But tonight, my tone was golden, and I didn't flake out for my solos--I played the heck out of them and felt so good when I walked off at the end. My friend the pianist commented on the cuteness of my skirt, so I twirled for her to show her how it flares. When I get excited, and I always get excited when I get to play my horn, I tend to lose a little bit of the inhibitions that truly inhibit me any other time.
So, the skirt-twirling is over, and the orchestra has gone home until Saturday morning, and here I sit with tons of energy and nothing to do but type. About the picture: I use a lot of stock photos for my job, and now and then I run across a great Hulton Archive photo that grabs me. This one fit the bill for this post--there will be plenty of others along the way.
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