i woke up with a headache. actually, it wasn't so much a headache as an eye ache... a terrible throbbing, directly behind my right eye and squidging out to my right temple.
after 2 cups of coffee (one of my co-workers insisted it would help) things ran pretty smoothly. my boss is leaving town tomorrow for two weeks, so a lot of time was devoted to assurances that we wouldn't burn the place to the ground in her absence.
things started to get really exciting after work. the durham symphony started a new round of rehearsals tonight. (i work as their stage manager & music librarian as a second job.) i've been doing this job for 4 or 5 years and tonight was the hardest night so far.
i got to the arts council building only to discover the key to the rehearsal room was missing. a problem easily overcome, though, as the off-duty sheriff-cum-security-guard had a master key that he lent me. so i opened up the space and almost immediately noticed that there were no music stands in the room. there are usually 60.
so, master key in hand, i started walking around the area looking for a whole mess of big bulky music stands. when i couldn't find any, i moved on to the next floor. no dice. the 3rd floor... nothing. i even unlocked the performance space to take a look, but i couldn't figure out how to turn on the lights.
i went back down to the sheriff and told him my problem... essentially, that 60 musicians were going to be showing up in approximately 20 minutes, expecting to have something to place their music on, and given the current state of things they were going to be sorely disappointed.
well, he really didn't seem to care. but i didn't leave his desk. i needed help... he wanted to surf the 'net. i eventually won...
...because in the course of my search i had seen that the light was still on in the arts council's executive director's office. so i went and knocked on her door (nothing like going straight to the top!) and informed her of the problem. she promptly phoned the building manager at home, grilled him as to the whereabouts of the 60 missing music stands, and then ordered the sheriff to help me move them. (they were hiding in a 3rd floor meeting room that i would have never thought to look in.)
time was ticking away before rehearsal started, and as we rode the freight elevator packed full of stands the sheriff suddenly starts to become friendly. he wants to know where i live ("duke park"), if i have a husband ("a boyfriend"), how long we've been together ("4.5 years"), and what my boyfriend does for a living ("um... are you married?? do you have kids??"). jeebus! it was a friendly interrogation, but it was starting to weird me out. it wasn't until we were done moving all the stands (2 trips in the clanky frieght elevator together) that i even thought to ask his name. "reese." then he asked mine and i should've lied. but i didn't.
after that exhausting ordeal the evening started to go a little more predictably, but the first rehearsal for a new concert is always hard for me. passing out all of the music, making sure musicians aren't missing parts, organizing the music from the prior concert that people are only just now returning when they should have done so two months ago... it's a lot of paperwork. sheet music work. and on top of all of that, i'm also lugging around stands, chairs and tympani... all with a busted foot. so when i finally got a chance to sit down and eat my 3-hour-old veggie sub i was thankful. i was also thankful that i had about 30 minutes towards the end of rehearsal to relax and knit a bit. hopefully next week i'll be able to do even more knitting, as the music (and music stand) issues should require less attention.
one of my favorite things about working for the durham symphony is interacting with the conductor, alan neilson. he looks like a conductor, with wild sprays of white hair going every which way, and acts like a conductor in that he often says goofy things that make perfect sense to him but leave the rest of us scratching our heads. two things came rolling out of his mouth today that made me laugh, so i decided to start compiling a list of "neilson-isms" (sort of like "ormandy-isms").
today's entries both occurred during the first run-through of stravinsky's firebird suite. this is tricky music, with strange time changes and syncopations. it's a familiar-sounding piece to most of the players, but is still difficult to sight-read. after a particularly difficult passage that resulted in a lot of confused questions from the musicians, alan got a little frustrated and said:
"you know, this music has been played before. it can be done."
"wow. does anyone have any notes left over??"