(no subject)
Morale in orchestra has hit an all time low.
Doesn't help that Samarov, the conductor taking over for DB during his sabbatical, is not pushing us hard at all. All we do is run the pieces while he says, "Sounds great, guys. Our concert is going to be glorious," while we cringe and give each other uneasy looks, because not a single person in the orchestra agrees with him. But we don't know how to fix it ourselves... we need some firm, strict direction - direction that we're not receiving.
Also, several weeks ago, five members were kicked out for drinking on the bus coming back from Mahtomedi, MN (they might not have been kicked out - I personally think it's more of a punishment for those still in the ensemble than for those who are gone - but members of the choir were similarly "dismissed" for the same charges, and the campus community would have rightly raised hell if there was any unequal treatment). We're definitely feeling the lack. We had a guest conductor last Monday who cut us off in the middle of the piece: "I'm not hearing the tuba at all here, could you play louder? Where's our tuba? Is he absent today? ...oh, we don't have a tuba? ...Is this something we shouldn't be talking about? ...I see. Okay, anyways..."
And, random poem because I feel like it. It's a great poem, and the mood is appropriate at the moment.
Lament for Cellists and Jacqueline Dupre, by Alan Dugan
When the beautiful cellist Jacqueline DuPre
died of multiple sclerosis at forty-two
all the cellists grieved, and one
fell on her instrument, not
as a sacrifice, but as an accident,
if there are such accidents. She was
hysterical, but there was no
damage to the tone, and it only cost
a thousand bucks to fix. Remember,
a cello is a beautiful shape of air
set in the right box and played by strings
played by strings the player plays:
the player can't get close to it the way
a violinist does, feeling the air play
the wood play the bones of his/her head
as the violinist joins the music to the brain.
That's why some cellists dance
with it like Yo Yo Ma, because it is
an outside music that they have to join
as athletes of a different air,
so when Jacqueline DuPre died young,
her muscles dying on her first,
it got to the cellists in their very art
because they're distant from their instrument:
it can't go to their heads, like violins.
With her, the music started distantly, then
it got more distant, then the distance
got to be the infinity of cello death
the way a cellist I knew would drape his tux
around his instrument before he went to sleep
after a performance in a strange town
so the cello could be the cellist through the night,
dead silent, with a black bow tie around its neck,
and he could joke away the horrors.
Doesn't help that Samarov, the conductor taking over for DB during his sabbatical, is not pushing us hard at all. All we do is run the pieces while he says, "Sounds great, guys. Our concert is going to be glorious," while we cringe and give each other uneasy looks, because not a single person in the orchestra agrees with him. But we don't know how to fix it ourselves... we need some firm, strict direction - direction that we're not receiving.
Also, several weeks ago, five members were kicked out for drinking on the bus coming back from Mahtomedi, MN (they might not have been kicked out - I personally think it's more of a punishment for those still in the ensemble than for those who are gone - but members of the choir were similarly "dismissed" for the same charges, and the campus community would have rightly raised hell if there was any unequal treatment). We're definitely feeling the lack. We had a guest conductor last Monday who cut us off in the middle of the piece: "I'm not hearing the tuba at all here, could you play louder? Where's our tuba? Is he absent today? ...oh, we don't have a tuba? ...Is this something we shouldn't be talking about? ...I see. Okay, anyways..."
And, random poem because I feel like it. It's a great poem, and the mood is appropriate at the moment.
Lament for Cellists and Jacqueline Dupre, by Alan Dugan
When the beautiful cellist Jacqueline DuPre
died of multiple sclerosis at forty-two
all the cellists grieved, and one
fell on her instrument, not
as a sacrifice, but as an accident,
if there are such accidents. She was
hysterical, but there was no
damage to the tone, and it only cost
a thousand bucks to fix. Remember,
a cello is a beautiful shape of air
set in the right box and played by strings
played by strings the player plays:
the player can't get close to it the way
a violinist does, feeling the air play
the wood play the bones of his/her head
as the violinist joins the music to the brain.
That's why some cellists dance
with it like Yo Yo Ma, because it is
an outside music that they have to join
as athletes of a different air,
so when Jacqueline DuPre died young,
her muscles dying on her first,
it got to the cellists in their very art
because they're distant from their instrument:
it can't go to their heads, like violins.
With her, the music started distantly, then
it got more distant, then the distance
got to be the infinity of cello death
the way a cellist I knew would drape his tux
around his instrument before he went to sleep
after a performance in a strange town
so the cello could be the cellist through the night,
dead silent, with a black bow tie around its neck,
and he could joke away the horrors.