Heading back to Newfoundland on Sunday for around 2 months to play in the Sound Symposium, Which is a new music festival located in St.Johns that has an amazing vibe and brings in performers of a whole boat load of backgrounds and disciplines...very excited to play my concerts and working and hanging with the other performers check it out here
In addition to that im doing shows all over the province with the Dardanelles. Traditional/irish/newf/good times. Looking forward to that.
Im also doing a few other one off gigs while im home, including some recording.
In other news, theres a 95% chance il lbe going back to school next year... more on that once i finaly decide for certian if im going to do it
Since im listening to it, Heres prokofiev PC #3 with the TSO
Sorry for the delay on the blog! Its been a crazy month!. Way too many gig stores and news to throw all in on blog so hopefully ill make a couple of updates over the next few days...
I had one of the most ridiculous gigs of my life at the start of June...
I got a call to play Carmina Burana (again, two carminas in one month!) from Dan Morphy, a killer percussionist in Toronto and great friend as well. In fact we have started a duo together with sights to take it to Newfoundland within the year...but that's for another post. Anyways, Dan calls and asks me to play the gig, with the one hang up. which is that instead of playing it with the normal, Timpani + 4,5, or 6 percussionists, we would be playing it with Timpani +1. You can already see that this is becoming a shit storm...
In the days leading to the gig we contacted the conductor to see if he would hire on any extra percussionists, to no avail. So the ensemble was to be two pianos, two percussionists. I mean, If you're going to have the small ensemble version of the piece at least get the whole section. They also did not have to rent any instruments outside of timpani, Which saved them quite a few dollars, but still, no dice.
We accepted this and went on the hour and a half drive to the gig, carrying on the whole time about how great this was going to be. Envisioning these multi percussion setups that we would both have to ensure we would strike the maximum amount of notes possible and look and sound amazing while doing it...IT was actually starting to sound like we could totally pull off a good show in our minds.
Then we get there...The venue looks like a place where you would hold a lions club dart league...albeit with a nice balcony. We load in our cases, xylophone, tam tam etc.. and i finally lay eyes on the timpani they had to rent, Brand new, still wrapped in plastic...I get to the 29' drum and the 26' drum first....fiberglass shells..but I cant be choosy can I. We move the drums up to the stage and i go look around to see if i can help bring up the rest of my drums (Carmina uses 5 timpani, 4 is doable, but 5 is pretty standard) So I ask the conductor where they are bringing these brand new drums in from. and he says all the drums are in. I ask where are they then so i can roll them up. And he says, "On stage, We only rented two timpani, They were free!".....After i heard that i knew we were in full blown pigfuck mode... A crowd gather around as i told him that the piece needs 5 drums...and he goes on to talk about how he assumed it would be ok with two...etc. I should put in here that the conductor is a totally sweet guy. Don't get me wrong...Just a little too assuming...
So at this point everyone who's in the choir or involved with this work is telling me how great the music store was for lending us two timpani for free and even delivering them without charge...None of them really give a shit that my part is now completely fucked! I go talk to dan about it and we laugh at how amazing this is going to be..and i accept my fate that this is not going to be the most glorious Carmina i have ever played...
We spend the next 20's making our setups, puting triangles and tambourines all over to make sure we can grab as much as possible, theres a bass drum in the middle of us so we can both cover that part when needed...etc..its actually a little fun...Untill i start to check the ranges of the timpani...the 29 sounds pretty good, Im getting the drum to work well in the whole range of the pedal...then i start the 26... holy shit... This drum is fucked. It can barley hit a D (carmina uses a whole load of E on that drum...so im crippled even more) Not to mention the head is so out tune with its self that its like a flexatone..I start to tune up my almost but not quite D for the huge Timpani intro....starting to feel a little sheepish about the whole thing
The rehearsal is about to start when we realize we didnt grab our percussion scores from the conductor/choir director yet... Dan walks down, and yes, believe it or not, They did not rent percussion scores for us to play from. "The percussionists always bring their own music, I just assumed you would bring your parts." I mean, Really....Maybe i should have a photo copy of the book somewhere...but I don't... I have a shit load of orchestra parts but that one just has notmade it to the folder yet..But to assume we have the music, and to never bring it up until the downbeat is just retarded...
Anyways, We played the show, Had a laugh in the process, even if it was the most mucked carmina burana, In the end i was actually kind of impressed with how much of it we managed to pull off,
Theres a bunch of more news but this is allready too long, Stories to come soon, Im even heading back to school, which is a bit of a trip now too
Ill leave you with the Dardanells, Im playing some shows with them in newfoundland next month, very excited to travel around the province and play outside the main city for the first time in a couple of years!
PS I make no apologies for how poorly this blog is written, It took me days to write that post...
