{"id":576,"date":"2008-03-15T14:17:31","date_gmt":"2008-03-15T14:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2008\/03\/15\/smp-live-blogging-a-concert-i\/"},"modified":"2008-03-15T14:17:31","modified_gmt":"2008-03-15T14:17:31","slug":"smp-live-blogging-a-concert-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2008\/03\/15\/smp-live-blogging-a-concert-i\/","title":{"rendered":"SMP- Live Blogging a concert I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well- I\u2019m here, live-blogging the final concert of the Guildford Spring Music Festival.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t by any means a foregone conclusion that I would be here- Suzanne is 11 days past her due date, and looked ready to burst at any moment this morning (more worrying she looks and feels different than she has). It\u2019s a strange feeling being 140 miles from home today of all days, but I\u2019m prepared to make a dash home should she go into labor. Of course, 20 miles from London is a good place to be if you need a professional conductor on 2 hours notice, but I\u2019m still feeling twitchy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.We\u2019re starting in a few minutes with\u00a0 the Beethoven. It always takes about 10 minutes for the orchestra to adjust to the change from the live, loud room we rehearse in to the rather dead Electric, and the 1<sup>st<\/sup> mvt of the Beethoven is so punishingly difficult for any orchestra under any circumstance (harder than Rite of Spring by miles) that it makes a poor choice for \u201cgetting used\u201d to anything, but we\u2019ll manage.<\/p>\n<p>The symphony is a wee bit over 30 minutes long, and I have one hour to rehearse it at the most, which is (or should be) plenty, but since some of the players only come today (the trumpets, trombones and timps) we have to cover everything- topping and tailing is not really an option. This may sound insane to American readers, but it\u2019s quite common here in the UK for budget reasons, if far from ideal. Still, as long as we have the A-team, it works fine. The only time it has been a disaster was in October, when we didn\u2019t get our usual trumpet\u00a0section and the lads that showed up were unprepared, spacey and late to rehearsal <strong><em>and<\/em><\/strong> late after the break (I was NOT impressed). The principal that day obviously hadn\u2019t twigged that there were major solos in the Poulenc we were doing, and was unable to satisfactorily pull those together between 3 pm and 8 pm, although I don\u2019t think the audience noticed the faking.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, today we have the A-team.<\/p>\n<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2008\/03\/15\/smp-live-blogging-a-concert-i\/\" send=\"false\" layout=\"box_count\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"true\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well- I\u2019m here, live-blogging the final concert of the Guildford Spring Music Festival. It wasn\u2019t by any means a foregone conclusion that I would be here- Suzanne is 11 days past her due date, and looked ready to burst at any moment this morning (more worrying she looks and feels different than she has). It\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-opion-life-as-a-performing-musician"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}