This week is full of con­certs. Last night, I per­formed with the dou­ble reed ensem­ble. We played an arrange­ment of a Bach Cha­conne for solo vio­lin, arranged and con­ducted by Alex Klein. The group was huge, with some­thing like 18 oboes, 3 Eng­lish horns, 12 bas­soons, and 2 con­tra­bas­soons. Last night’s con­cert was all huge ensem­bles of like instru­ments. The high­light was prob­a­bly all the horns (some ungodly num­ber, I’m not sure exactly how many) play­ing Bohemian Rhap­sody. It was quite hilarious.

Tonight, the Panamer­i­can Octet (Mad­Winds — Chelle + four South Amer­i­can musi­cians) is play­ing a move­ment from a Mozart ser­e­nade. We haven’t had as many rehearsals as we might like, since every­one is run­ning in dif­fer­ent direc­tions all the time. But, it should go pretty well. Tomor­row, Mad­Winds are play­ing a run-out social con­cert. So far, we have no infor­ma­tion about where it’ll be. Last week we played in a bank, but other groups have gone to nurs­ing homes, parks, and malls. Fri­day, I think I have an orches­tra con­cert (they’re a lit­tle short on infor­ma­tion around here), and the bas­soon quar­tet I’m play­ing in is per­form­ing on another con­cert. Sat­ur­day, Mad­Winds is play­ing again. The orches­tra con­cert may be that day too, I’m not really sure.

In any case, I’m get­ting lots of play­ing time in all sorts of dif­fer­ent ensem­bles. I’m going to try to play a solo in mas­ter­class tomor­row or the next day, too — prob­a­bly Villa-lobos’s Ciranda das sete notas. I fig­ure that I should play some­thing Latin Amer­i­can while I have the oppor­tu­nity to work with Latin Amer­i­can bas­soon teachers.