A musically productive day

[hudebnik]

A month or two ago Deonna, shalmestere, and I agreed to put together a main-stage concert for Pennsic, entitled "An Evening in la Salle des Ardents: Smoky Medieval Jazz". shalmestere, the Repertoire Goddess, started putting together a setlist, and she and I played through some of the pieces. Then Deonna drove down to visit us this past Friday, and we spent two hours Friday night and about six hours Saturday rehearsing, going through each of the pieces in the setlist to see what instrumentation worked and what didn't, what pieces need to be re-edited and re-printed, what pieces need the most practice, how long each piece takes, etc. And I think we made a lot of progress. We each have things to practice individually; shalmestere and I have specific things to practice together; we have another visit planned to rehearse with all three of us; we'll get in some more last-minute rehearsal at Pennsic; and the concert is scheduled for 7:00 Monday evening, August 8 at the Performing Arts Stage, just before the Debatable Choir. Be there or be square, man!

Comments

[hlinspjalda]

That sounds delightful, just like the audio environment of Buðgarðr. :-D Wish I could be there!

[cellio]

I'm looking forward to as much of this as I can attend while also fulfilling my choir pre-concert obligations. Drat, wish there were someone else between us! But I should get to hear some of it at least!

[hudebnik]

Yeah, when I saw the schedule I thought "cr@p, so nobody from Debatable Choir will be at our concert." But you can probably hear the beginning (before you start warming up) and the end (before you take the stage), particularly since the first and last pieces in the setlist will be on shawms. Somewhat less "jazzy" than the rest of the program, but they're cool pieces too.

Is there usually somebody recording these concerts? Can we get somebody to record these concerts?

[cellio]

I wish there were organized recordings. As far as I know, Pennsic doesn't do that; they probably consider it too much of a logistics problem (and/or equipment risk). Groups that want recordings have to arrange their own. The choir has sometimes gotten an audience member to take a cell-phone recording from the back of the tent, sometimes not, and sometimes we thought we did but there were technical difficulties.