Saturday, December 18, 2010

Day 14 - Last day at the Old Gothic Building

2 weeks of rehearsals have flown by! Where did the time go?

We started rehearsing Part 1 today, orchestra only. The chorus spent the morning in another room of the old museum building rehearsing their parts.


Attendance again was indifferent. Many strings were missing, on this overcast sunday morning. John was not impressed. But he, along with the rest of the orchestra was very impressed with our ever growing bass section. They have multiplied themselves to 12 now. 2 more than on Saturday. Champion sound and a great looking section. Just looking across the top of the section and seeing 12 scrolls and various shaped heads, it looked like a scene from say, a movie production of The Day Of the Triffids.

Brass was short of a trumpet again but Geoff Payne was seated next to Sara (not his wife!) and it was Mitch who was at a most important brass band christmas carol gig this morning. He was silly enough to wear his brass band shirt to rehearsal and we let him know about it. All in good fun of course... well from most of us!

Wind section, 100% attendance again!

I think our choir is at its largest now. There was one section John was not very happy about but other than that, Alison Roger's magic is being retained by individual choir members and being delivered on stage with the orchestra today. Bravo!!

Brass bands? Further chatting with Peter Luff and others re assured my comments about them in yesterdays comment in my post. I mean the ones who aren't turning up. The ones who are there are sounding great. Peter mentioned that some of the ones that are letting us down now, have let down other ensembles before. Jeff Wecker, Peter Luff, John Curro and other organisers can be their mummy, driving them to rehearsals, spoon feeding them their parts and changing their nappies. Be responsible!

While the brass bands might not seem like the best part to perform, it is an integral part of the symphony. You are part of a unique and a once in a life time opportunmity.

To those concerned, you are not only letting down the hundreds of people already committed to this opportunity, you are letting yourself down. Some of you won't even be asked for any future gigs as a result. There are professional musicians taking a pay cut for the opportunity to perfom this symphony. Others like myself are also taking a pay cut. If you knew you couldn't take a pay cut, then you shouldn't have committed in the first place. Maybe things changed after you committed, that's fine. Just don't bail out in the last few days before the performance.

I think that's the last of any negativity for this blog. I feel better now with this out of my system.

A few blupps and ptings and incorrect entries eminated from the brass today while going through the "hard" part of this work, Part 1. Other than that, we knew our parts much better today. We were suffering from a few continuous days of hard yakka. Tomorrow's day of rest is most welcome! Part 2, with much less notes worked much better.

"We have left the building" The Old Museum Building today will be Gothic no more. Onto our performance venue, the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, South Bank on Tuesday. I'm sure the car park stations will love all 500+ of us on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The concert was sold out weeks ago. I think there are still a few tickets to the open rehearsal on Tuesday. Contact the Gothic organisers.

Today, showed us that we can perform this massive work. Over the past 2 weeks the organisers proved they could make this happen and take care of the performers at the same time. Tuesday and Wednesday can not arrive soon enough.

Stay tuned with the Gothic Tuba Experience

John Szkutko

2 comments:

  1. It's interesting to note that one of those that require spoon-feeding and haven't turned up yet were really pushy about ensuring that they be included in the performance. I had to assure them a few times that there would be a position for them, so it's a bit disappointing to me personally that they haven't honoured their responsibilities. Unfortunately, people don't tend to forget being let down like this for a long time.

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  2. Interesting knowing this Adrian. It just adds to the myre of disppointment we are experiencing with regard to our brass bands. Correction, the Gothic's brass bands!

    After all is said and done, we all know who will be getting the future gigs (paid or unpaid) and who will not!

    Day of rest now then "take no prisoners".

    I can't wait!!!!

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