So what would compel me to fish out my clarinet from underneath a desk, 7 years since having last closed it? Nothing short of a surprise performance to pay tribute to a retiring high school music teacher. That is to say, retiring from teaching high school music, but “graduating” to a university music program. I’m not too inclined to name names — got to keep this place marginally anonymous — but Google is really a click away.
I think that, if you were going to show up to play, then you likely spent at least a good 4 years playing one instrument, and from what I saw from the only rehearsal the day before the event, that kind of experience is hard to lose. The moment the band attempted its first run at Lyric Essay (Donald Coakley) after tuning, there was a very real sense that we could pull this stunt off.
Us alumni had help. The thing that goes first with lack of practice is technique, and nothing that we played was too demanding overall, and what tricky spots there were could be faked since it wasn’t a prominent section. There were quite a few people who continued music through university, several of them becoming music teachers in their own right, and we were also supplemented by current high school music students in parts where we were understaffed.
Most had the benefit of seeing these pieces before, although it was mostly sight-reading for me. We performed Lyric Essay, an abridged version Children’s March (Percy Grainger), and Ross Roy (Jacob de Haan). I had never seen the first, I had played a different (and easier) arrangement of the second in the past, and my memory is fuzzy on the third. It’s a grade 10 piece, or advanced grade 9, and I may have played it in class, but I don’t think it was something I played in serious rehearsal or concert.
I took a demotion to second clarinet, but the firsts continued to play after they graduated, whereas I clearly had not. Took for one for the team, and got to not embarrass myself to boot.
Saturday night was largely successful. Completely surprise was achieved, no mean feat considering that the entire music department and the wife was in on it. There was an elaborate story to drag him into the school involving a friend with a broken down car, and a non-existent volleyball game as an excuse for all of the cars in the school parking lot.
But our first piece of the night, Children’s March was shaky In the run-up to the evening, we held a quick half-hour refresher and played through it, and I was stunned to hear the band fall apart in the middle. At least a third of us got lost in one of those cascading effects where people came in when they weren’t supposed to.
There was a disturbing drop in volume as people took the most appropriate action and waited for a landmark section to come back in, and we recovered. It didn’t happen the night before, but it happened again during the real thing. It might have been a combination of nerves and the addition of new students, as there were a bunch of faces that I hadn’t seen during rehearsal. Anyway, two scary moments.
We managed to get our act together for a “guest of honour” conduction of Lyric Essay, and it went off without incident, being not technically demanding and all. In between pieces, staff, former staff (plus former head of the music department), former students, and friends all went to the microphone to speak. At turns touching and hilarious, the night was a class act, the same as was demanded in the past.
Ross Roy was freaking amazing, or “not bad for 80-something people playing together for the second time in two days.” Afterwards, he said that it was expected. After all, we were students of great bands. I think he might have a point.
But if nothing else, winging it is a lot of fun.
Tags: misadventures, music
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