The quality of our playing just gets better and better! I do notice some people still sharing parts or not having the music at the ready, for those who are recent additions to our band, a new playlist for each month is published in the last week of the preceding month, it will generally contain around 25% new material plus anything we are currently working on and is available for download prior to the new month commencing, if you experience difficulty downloading or printing ( sometimes parts show up as black or don’t print properly) you can contact the relevant librarian or web team via email on the website and they can either organise it to be printed or help you out, there is no reason not to have the music these days.
Our warm up chorales are starting to work as we are focussing on the elements of playing right from the start of the evening. A few people have queried as to why we don’t rehearse the play out folders prior to every public performance, there are two reasons, firstly because of a lack of time in rehearsal as we concentrate on expanding our skills and secondly the fact that the skills we have developed on our weekly rehearsals should carry over to the easier pieces found in the play out folders negating the need for extensive rehearsal.
The low brass tutorial provided a great opportunity to tighten and explore some of the intimate phrases and sections of our contest pieces which showed great improvement throughout the evening, if you can’t be at the designated sectional call, feel free to jump in another one that is more suitable.
Probably the biggest challenge has been and will always be dynamics! Knowing the stage at the Joan Sutherland centre which is very like the opera house stage in that you feel quite isolated in your own playing and are liable to over compensate as you feel you are playing too loud etc, th challenge will be to adapt to that environment instantly and allow the dynamic range of the band to be heard.
All in all it was an impressive rehearsal all round, thank you
Murray