St. Cecilia II Part 6 -- Next Year, Odds and Ends, Final Thoughts
Next Year
So next year. Next year will probably be crazy times. It’s not a secret that we’re going to start trying to have kids this fall. If successful that might mean I’d be either very pregnant or with an infant this time next year. And no, we are not going to postpone trying for an SCA event. There has already been too much postponement IMO. (For perfectly good reasons.) Plus there’s no guarantee of success, so... yeah. Regardless I need to keep in mind that I might be encumbered at the event. Ditto aelkiss, though less him if I’m “merely” pregnant. Priorities!
Conveniently, ermenrich expressed interest in being a co-event steward, and Kasha’s been unofficially helping run the event anyway. So we’re going to all be co-event stewards next year. We’re all really excited about the event, we all work pretty well together. It should be a good time.
The big thing that I’ve been hearing in the background is that people might want the event to be longer. Like a weekend event kind of longer. Also people want two concerts.
Granted the event already is a weekend event, what with the Friday pre-revel and the Sunday brunch. But it’s not official. And I can only have so many people in my house. (These things are related.)
I have already been wanting it to be a longer event, so this is happy news. There’s so much more we could do if we had more time!
Logistics are special if the event is What I Really Want, though. Like I could just alter the event by having Friday night at the church. (We can already get in there the night before for setup, and we use it for Terp’s Friday dance.) Then on Sunday we have a picnic in the park. Maybe we rent the pavillion. And done. Three day event.
But this is not what I want. What I want is for the event to start nominally on Thursday. Classes on Friday all day, Saturday all day, and Sunday morning. Evening stuff in the middle. The expectation is that people arrive Thursday night so they are there all of Friday. If this sounds an awful lot like KWDMS you are not wrong!
With this set up, two concerts would be easy. One would be on Friday open to everyone with short slots for each group. The one on Saturday would be for people with Projects. There would be fewer groups and I’d ask for proposals ahead of time. How much time people get is dependent on how many Projects there are. If somehow we ended up with too many groups with Projects, that would be the happiest problem I could have.
With two full days of classes we could do a lot. We could have Sight-singing classes over the course of three days. (Much more reasonable than one hour on one day.) We could have more unstructured time. We could experiment with impromptu classes. We could arrange for the private lessons thing even!
But logistics. If we do What I Really Want, we might need to find a different site. Ideally we’d get a school or a conference center or a hotel or something. But the SCA is quite cost-conscious, and we don’t really have the numbers to justify such extravagances. And I like the suggested donation model. I like that it was $6 this year. Going from $6 to $60 would be a bit too steep an increase.
We’d also need more food. And a place that would let us have food. We’d need people to be OK with housing people for another night or two. (I don’t think this would be too much of a problem since most of the people hosting were attending the event anyway.) Also people would probably have to take off work unless I have it at holiday times.
Realistically I think we’ll end up doing the smaller increase in the event next year: having the site open on Friday and have a more public space on Sunday. It’d be a cheap way to make it bigger. I don’t know what we’d do about the two concerts. Maybe we’d replace the Master class with a small concert? Maybe we’d have one on Friday night? I don’t know. I also don’t know if that’s what people want. After all, the event already is essentially all this right now...
Odds and Ends
It was suggested that we arrange to have a piece that everyone in the performance could perform as a finale to the concert. I love this idea. Maybe double choir? Maybe we could the shawm-kateers to add accompaniment. So So cool. I have goosebumps thinking about it. If we have two concerts we could have two large group finales.
A suggestion for the master class would be to encourage less experienced performers to do it. This way the advice would be applicable to more people. I like this idea, however I’m not sure where to find such people. It takes a special kind of performer to get critiqued in front of an audience. Often those people are already pretty good. I might know a person or two though. Maybe.
I took video of the concert. The video did indeed record. So did the audio. I used a separate recorder for that. Turned out to be a good thing too because the audio clipped on the video recording. It felt so good to sit behind the camera and see that it was working. I’m going to get all that stuff processed This Week. Much flogging will happen if I don’t get it done.
The event did not conflict with Kalamazoo’s Medieval Congress this year, but it did conflict with Battle of the Inland Seas. Turned out the latter conflict was more significant than the former. So next year I will probably put it against Kzoo instead of BOTIS. Although there was a double reed workshop the same weekend as Kzoo, so maybe I’ll move it somewhere else. I don’t know!
Attendance was about the same as last year. Maybe a little less. The Ohio people didn’t come (*sad*). Nor did the Roaring Wastes people. A bunch of other people did come, like more people from Ayreton and Ealdomere. I think this event has room to grow.
Final Thoughts
Was it better than last year? I don’t think it’s possible for the event to be actually better than it’s first year. Like, quality wise I think everything was taken to the next level. The classes were better. There was more opportunities for playing. The concert pieces were of higher quality. We had program notes. I heard shawms being played somewhere in the building. We had great food.
But, the first year was the first year. Everyone was so pleasantly surprised with how well the event went. I don’t think that can ever be topped.
So, I think it was a very respectable sequel to last year.
I am very nervous about next year because of that whole kids thing. I am probably crazy to think about doing this. But I just have to think about Martin and Emma. They helped coordinate KWDMS in Hamilton when Emma was lots of months pregnant. Inspirational people are inspirational. And I’ll have lots of help.
Yay music!