As has become our standard we had yet another strong rehearsal in preparation for our concert in March.
As we develop our playing abilities through the challenges we present we continue to grow as musicians…. Now this may seem a convoluted statement at this time but I am acutely aware that some players feel they are not up to standard or ability level to play major works such as phantom etc, yet having sat in all different areas of the band and played a number of different parts I am completely confident in the ability levels of all our players and I constantly hear improvements and developments occurring. There is a simple thing to remind yourself of….you are good enough! Unfortunately the long time lag between contests makes it very difficult to maintain that focus as we need to keep working on the same pieces each week only to see the opportunity set back further and further as cancellations occur…rest assured we are playing phantom in March come he’ll or high water….we need to and we deserve to!
As was illustrated last night however, we can now start to think more about the style that we play on individual pieces, this in itself is a step up…. We aren’t just playing notes but doing something with them…. The stark contrast between phantom and led zeppelin shows it clearly, the latter is a full on rock chart requiring drive and power for most of its duration, the former is a love song and should be lighter and much more sensitive, so how do we achieve this….the answer is again simple…..listen…to the melody, listen for other parts that emerge and leave room to grow…. We can do this…. Think of phantom less as a test or mountain we are currently struggling up and more as a relationship with its intricacies and its ups and downs….. create the picture in your mind and then musically paint it for others.
Murray