Dear Metropolitan Musician,
Congratulations on a fantastic start on our next concert cycle! It feels good to get through the sight-reading part of this process, and now we can start digging into our parts, especially those passages that you just can’t read through at tempo.
We know you will love learning our new music over the next few months! But you will also be challenged by difficult key signatures, twisty scales at fast performance tempos, and other aspects of this music. Thank you for getting started with SLOW individual practice to get your brains, fingers, and embouchures going.
Of course, the best thing you can do right away is to listen to recordings of our music with your part in front of you. This will help you quickly solve a lot of early-process errors:
- How should the music sound?
- How does your part fit in with the overall texture?
- What is your target tempo?
Here are some links to exemplary performances of our music:
- Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 4 (mov. 4) (start at 35:06)
- Borodin, Symphony No. 2 (mov. 3) (start at 12:31)
- Arnold, Four Cornish Dances
- Liszt, Les Preludes (For May concert, but rehearsals will start this fall.)
Looking ahead, click here for the calendar for the next several months of Met rehearsals. We distributed a hard copy of this in rehearsal yesterday evening. Please make note of the special dates, in addition to our weekly Monday rehearsals:
- Tuesday, January 30, 8:30 am – 3:00 pm: Community Concerts at MYAC and school TBD
- Friday, February 9, 4:30-6:30 pm: Rehearsal at MYAC
- Sunday, February 11, 8:45-10:00 am: Rehearsal at Carroll University, Shattuck Auditorium
- Sunday, February 11, 1:00 pm: Concert at Carroll University, Shattuck Auditorium
We trust you all will have a restful and enjoyable Thanksgiving Day and break this week! You deserve some time with family and away from school for a few days. We will see you again on Monday, November 27.
Mr. John Emanuelson (JohnEmanuelson@myso.org)
Mr. Jon Winkle (jawtbn@att.net)