Dear Met Musician and Family,
We had a well-attended and productive rehearsal last night—our final session together before SECTIONALS next Monday!
One of the benefits everyone receives participating in MYSO–in part, due to the result of your efforts raising money during the Play Your Part campaign–is the hiring of this special team of professional musicians once per concert cycle. You can learn a tremendous amount about the music, technique, and general practicing from your coaches, and also receive guided practice on the most difficult passages in our current repertoire. Please, bring your questions and needs to the table. The pro’s genuinely WANT to help you be more successful! Thank you for prioritizing your attendance next week for this super important session.
During our split session after break, Mr. Emanuelson made a very important bowing change in Rienzi, with the goal being to lighten our sound in these passages (remember how Mr. Winkle worked with the cellos to lighten the section sound?). He HOPES everyone made these changes (re-take bow, bounce bow off string at the balance point, do this EVERY TIME at ALL dynamic levels) in pencil throughout your music, each time this pattern and its related accompaniment appears. In case you were unclear or didn’t understand that this was a systemic change for the whole piece, here is an example of this adjustment. Sectional clinicians should reinforce this change next week, too.
Percussion: Much like the brass section, you are often required to sit for long periods of time and then expected to seamlessly integrate your parts into the rest of the orchestra. Remember that you have to listen to the entire ensemble to fit your part into the overall time and orchestration. There is a lot of detail involved with what your section does!
Woodwinds and Brass: Remember to work with a tuner to better understand your intonation tendencies on specific notes. Unisons and octaves, perfect fifths and fourths…developing more consistent intonation with these examples is the only way to develop a better understanding of how to hear chord structures when major or minor thirds and major or minor sevenths are added to the mix. And then there were those stacked fourths in the The Phantom of the Opera that Mr. Winkle reviewed!
Have a great week!
Mr. John Emanuelson (johnemanuelson@myso.org)
Mr. Jon Winkle (jonwinkle.tidc@gmail.com)