christ, 2009 already?

Yeah, yeah, New Year, resolutions, whatever.

There are a few I could make. Stuff about eating healthier,¹ exercising more,² taking better care of myself, getting out of the house more, attempting to socialize more...

You know what? Fuck it.

I don't really care about any of that. What I really ought to do is sit here and practice trombone until I either become a successful musician or burn out in the attempt. To hell with everything else.

Everything I do should be preceded with the question, "How will this make me a better musician?" And if I can't come up with a concrete, cause-and-effect answer, then maybe it needs to go... or at least be put off until after 10:00 PM, when I can't practice any more for the day.³

There's a New Year's resolution for you.

"But," you may ask, "what would you be changing then?"

Isn't it obvious?

I need to practice more. Clearly I have been slacking off.

Seriously, though... can anyone definitively prove that mental health is necessary to being a good musician?

I want to see charts. And graphs.

1. which probably involves more than one meal a day[↩]


2. actually doing okay on this, but only because I need the extra lung capacity[↩]


3. And I should be listening to recordings as I do it, which means I need headphones.[↩]

so, how did it go?

So, first an update on the last post:

It was the best of all possible outcomes... he hired a sub. Words cannot express how relieved I was.

As for the rest of the concert?

Well.

This particular gig had two performances: Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. We were playing a few movements from a ballet suite, a piano concerto and a symphony, with an utterly forgettable Christmas medley for an encore. Two rehearsals, only one of which had low brass, resulted in a slightly frustrated section.¹

The Saturday performance was about what I expected it to be. We all ended at the same time, which is about all one can really hope for.² And then there was the Sunday performance...

We walked in and were met at the door by one of the other musicians. She may have been the orchestra librarian; I’m not really sure.

“Oh, hey, you guys have some new music on your stand.”

?

“Yeah, the soloist can’t be here today, so we’re playing some other stuff instead. You, uh, might want to warm up on stage and take a look at it.”

!

You know, I have sight-read at a performance before, but having a soloist not show was a first for me.³

I sat down on stage and the first words out of my mouth were, “This is going to be the greatest concert ever.” This was quickly followed by, “Why haven’t I invested in a hip flask yet?” The level of sarcasm in the back row only went up from there.

We rehearsed a few spots before the concert, in a slap-dash sort of way.⁴ The music wasn’t that hard... at least, not for the trombone section, and considering the circumstances, it went better than expected.⁵ I especially liked the part at the beginning of the concert where the conductor told the audience what had happened, and essentially apologized on behalf of the orchestra for any fuck-ups. Now that’s classy.

Sadly, that also appears to be the last of my gigs for the holiday season. If I were a real musician I’d have a few more, but alas, I am not. So, back to my hole practice room I go until after the New Year. Here’s hoping I survive the holidays.⁶

1. Oh, we’re not taking repeats in this piece? Good to know. Would have been better to know before we started the piece, of course.[↩]


2. I don’t really think Dvorak intended his 6th symphony to be quite that atonal, but whatever.[↩]


3. Incidentally, we never did find out what happened to the pianist. He seemed fine Saturday night, and while I don’t know what could possibly take someone down that quickly, it’s probably something pretty serious. So, I hope he’s okay.[↩]


4. All this while the audience members were milling around in the lobby, probably wondering what the hell was going on.[↩]


5. In other words, we didn’t train wreck.[↩]


6. Alcohol will probably be involved.[↩]

it's true, you never really leave high school

Oh. My. God.

This weekend? There could be drama.

Wait, let me back up.

My high school music experience was less than stellar. My first year, our instrumental program consisted of one band with maybe twenty people in it. My high school was only offering the band director position part-time, which made it difficult to find good candidates. My first trombone instructor actually considered applying for this job until he found this out. Apparently he also had a fascinating conversation with the school principal about why you can’t really march with only twenty people.¹

So, for my first two years of high school they had newly hired this one fellow. And, he was incompetent. Staggeringly so. So much so that even a high school freshman could tell he had no idea what he was doing. There are many anecdotes I could recount... like the time he wandered off during a playoff game to get a cheeseburger and left a student conducting the pep band for the entire second half of the game. Or the time he made my normally calm and laid back friend so furious that he punched a wall and broke his hand.

The entire band hated him. Those of us that did honor bands were ashamed to admit what school we went to, and couldn’t bring ourselves to applaud when asked to thank our music teachers. I almost quit band because of him.² Even now if you mention his name to any of us that were in that band, you will probably see open hostility... and as bitter and cynical as I am, I am rarely actually hostile. After he left, a formerly retired band director took over, and it was like night and day. I couldn’t believe what he managed to do with our sad little group in just one year, and it only made me feel more cheated.

We later heard through the grapevine that he had taken another teaching job with a middle school, and then had had a nervous breakdown. And we laughed. The people that didn’t know him thought we were horrible... all those that did remember him laughed along with us. The last I heard, he was doing construction.

This could be shrugged off as the biased memories of an overdramatic teenager.³ And, you know, we weren’t exactly easy on him. You’d be amazed at the shenanigans you can get away with when you’re 14 and your teacher doesn’t know what he’s doing, and the trombones were the worst offenders. Now I look back on those days and shake my head a bit. I was the token voice of reason in that group,⁴ but I didn’t really try as hard as I could have, because I had lost all respect for our teacher.

However. My undergraduate school just happened to be the same place that he got his teaching certification for this state. And the faculty there remembered him. Oh, did they. And they took great pains to make sure I understood that he had never actually attended the school as a student and that the music faculty had had no say in the certification procedure. I believe the words "we all knew he shouldn’t have been teaching" were used.

Oh, and also? Apparently he had to do his student teaching twice... because he failed the first time.

I could say more, but you probably get the idea.

Anyway. The other day I had to go pick up some music for a gig I’m playing this weekend. And as I was initialing the sign-out sheet, guess whose name I saw under second clarinet?

I actually physically backed away from the clipboard.⁵

Now, it’s been a long time, and I would personally rather just let it all go and never speak to him again. I have this feeling, however, that he’s going to come up and talk to me and act like we’re all buddies, and I’m going to end up biting my tongue and being politely insincere. Or, you know, maybe he blames my classmates and I for being less than cooperative. An actual fight would be hilarious, but I rather not deal with the resulting drama. I’m not a big fan of drama, and prefer to avoid it whenever possible.

So, here’s hoping he never looks behind him. I’m shooting for quiet and anticlimactic here. However, if he does decide to start some shit?

Oh, it’s on.⁶

1. My band never marched. It was the only good thing about high school.[↩]


2. My youth symphony is what saved me... I don’t know what I would have done without them.[↩]


3. I know, this is redundant.[↩]


4. and because of that I never actually got into trouble for any of it[↩]


5. It’s a good thing no one was in the office at the time, because that would have looked quite strange.[↩]


6. Note: this will probably not happen.[↩]