It’s a Perfect-Weather Friday!
What a beautiful day today! It’s so nice after that rain earlier. I had a fun week and was able to go to my very first regular season Packer game last night and, while our team has some serious “challenges,” it was so cool being there with 79,000 fans including Professor Dvorak, MYSO Conductor Emeritus, former Music Director of MYSO’s Wind Ensemble and UWM Director of Bands.
OK, our upcoming concerts! So, we’ve made progress, and I think we need to stay focused on the Saint-Saëns and Higdon again in sectionals and rehearsal. Please practice the areas that you have not mastered….
And can you count silently while playing? If not, verbally count your rhythms along with a metronome to keep you honest. A couple videos on this subject:
and
Remember for those pesky rhythms, neatly mark some beats and subdivisions to help impress solutions to difficult measures on your mind and muscle memory. Practice passages slowly enough to be correct/perfect at the slow speed, after you find the solutions, add repetition to polish and then move up the tempo. Some polishing takes 50-75 or more repetitions….a bunch of you know this already. Gotta build those brain/muscle memories.
So, has it registered with you that we have a back to back rehearsals Sunday, October 8, and Monday, October 9? These will be hugely helpful in retaining our skills and we get to work on further refinements with coaches on the 9th.
For Sectional Time
Leaders/Coaches, please work on what you’d like to prepare/practice. I suggest something like this:
- 5:30 – Higdon
- 5:55 – Saint-Saëns
- 6:15 – End
Percussion, Higdon and Hisaishi : )
Monday, October 2
- 5:20 – Report to Sectionals
- 5:30 – Sectionals:
- 6:15 – Sectional End and Break
- 6:30 – Higdon, Blue Cathedral
- 7:15 – Break
- 7:30 – Humperdinck, Evening Prayer and Dream Pantomime
- 7:45 – Hisaishi, Water Traveller
- 8:00 – Saint-Saëns, Symphony No.3
- 8:45 – Rehearsal End