Concert

Les Arcs, February 2024

Things are going to calm right down at last, with some days coming up having only one thing in them, and Friday to Sunday having nothing at all, which is probably a record. UJ will have gone back home to Kyiv so I'm looking forward to a bit of peace and quiet, in which I intend to do some walking if the weather is fine, and watching films. There may be nothing to blog about.

Meanwhile, our concert took place, for which my practice paid off and I experienced no significant embarrassments. It was different from our usual concert because we joined up with a small orchestra called Eclectica, which seemed similar to Lola II's music group. We (Coventry Arts' flutes, saxophones and clarinets) played the first half, there was an interval with tea and cakes, then Eclectica started the second half and we all came together for three Christmas pieces at the end. 

I loved the discipline of the orchestra, which reminded me of my school days. They tuned properly at the start, nobody chatted, they paid attention to the conductor... There are all sorts of tiny annoyances within our group - people parping when others are trying to tune (on the rare occasions when we do tune), people not having their music in order, everyone having to wait while someone finds a pencil, or drops a pencil, people chatting while another section is running through something, people just not listening then asking where we're playing from... There's one woman in particular who starts talking as soon as we stop playing and then invariably doesn't know where we're starting from. But despite these little issues I do enjoy the end result, most of the time.

Playing the baritone sax is quite tiring compared to the clarinet, and I had quite a lot to play so I wasn't sure I'd manage to make it to the end of the mass items. There was always going to be scope for miming among that number of people, but because of the break in the middle I carried on playing through to the very end. It was a very successful event in a much better venue than our usual cramped and freezing church - we were in a school hall with a stage - and the audience was much bigger than ours usually is. It was even accessible by train so UJ came along together with a man she's been seeing, who seemed very nice.