Wow… just… wow…

October 13, 2006 4 comments

Allow me to present what is quite pos­si­bly the most… amaz­ing… record­ing ever made of Mozart’s Bas­soon Con­certo. Every­thing about this per­for­mance shows off the dar­ing and coura­geous nature of these per­form­ers. Not only do they use a band rather than an orches­tra, they explore new dimen­sions of bal­ance and tex­ture by alter­ing the stan­dard size rela­tion­ships between instru­men­tal sec­tions. They also choose to boldly ven­ture beyond the fairly sim­ple har­monies that Mozart wrote, explor­ing the kinds of dis­so­nant har­monies that Mozart’s great-great-grandchildren (if he’d had any) might have employed (“Eine kleine Nois­e­rock”). Fur­ther­more, they refuse to be shack­led by tra­di­tional con­cep­tions of pitch and dynamic con­trast. In each of these areas, they explore fron­tiers not often heard or tol­er­ated. Far and away the most auda­cious deci­sion made by this illus­tri­ous avant-garde ensem­ble was to record their per­for­mance and to allow it to be cir­cu­lated out­side their own membership.

Enjoy: Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart — Con­certo for Bas­soon, K. 191

Guster

July 24, 2006 1 comment

All Access, Baby!

On Sat­ur­day night, I man­aged to get off work early so that I could go to a show in Nashville. My friend Whit­ney, who I met while work­ing the Folk­life Fes­ti­val this year, is part of the crew for a band called Guster. They, along with Fruit Bats and Ray LeMon­tagne were per­form­ing at the Ryman Audi­to­rium in Nashville.

I met Whit­ney at the main entrance to the Ryman, and she gave me an all access pass for the night. I went with her and her brother Dar­ren (who was tag­ging along on the tour for a cou­ple of con­certs) through the back­stage area and out to the tour buses. She gave me a quick tour of the crew bus. It was fairly nice, but space was at a pre­mium — nine or ten peo­ple live on the bus. The cramped bunks seemed like some­thing you’d find on a sub­ma­rine; the cool­ers full of beer did not.

Dar­ren, me, Whitney

Back inside the Ryman, Whit­ney showed me what she does on the tour. She works with a non-profit called Reverb, which was founded by one mem­ber of Guster and his wife. Reverb works to off­set the envi­ron­men­tal impact of rock tours (includ­ing those of Guster, Dave Matthews Band, and Bon­nie Raitt) by doing things like procur­ing biodiesel for the tour vehi­cles and gen­er­at­ing wind-powered elec­tric­ity in amounts equal to those used at each con­cert. Pretty cool stuff. The orga­ni­za­tion also works to raise aware­ness about var­i­ous envi­ron­men­tal issues, which is where Whit­ney and her cowork­ers come in.

By the time I’d seen the Reverb tables and lit­er­a­ture, the first two acts were done play­ing, and Guster was set­ting up. While we waited, Dar­ren man­aged to con­vince some­one at the con­ces­sion stand that our “All Access” passes extended to the pop­corn machine. We went into the audi­to­rium just before Guster came onstage. The show was sold out, so we ended up just stand­ing at the back of the bal­cony. The venue isn’t very large, so we could see and hear per­fectly well from up there.

Guster on Stage

The band come onstage in rented Manuel suits as a nod to the Grand Ole Opry, which inhab­ited the Ryman for 30 years. I must admit that I didn’t know any­thing about Guster before going to the show, but I thor­oughly enjoyed their per­for­mance. The band is a four­some — a per­cus­sion­ist and three oth­ers who trade off lead, rhythm and bass gui­tar, and some­times throw key­boards, lap steel gui­tar, and banjo in the mix as well. I don’t know how to prop­erly clas­sify their music — I guess It’s some fla­vor of alter­na­tive rock. Along with the role– and instrument-switching, I was very impressed by Brian, the drum­mer. He spent most of the con­cert play­ing hand per­cus­sion. It’s unusual to see such an empha­sis on hand per­cus­sion in a rock band, but he did a damn fine job of it. The band seems to be very appre­cia­tive of their fans — they played four or five songs as an encore. When the audi­ence still wouldn’t stop yelling and clap­ping, they came back onstage to play one more acoustic song (neces­si­tated by an 11 pm noise curfew).

After the con­cert, Whit­ney took me back­stage again. We breezed past a bunch of fans wait­ing for their turn at the post-concert meet-and-greet, and she intro­duced me to a cou­ple of the guys in the band. Then, we went down to the stage and hung out for awhile while all the sound and light gear was being packed away. It’s always inter­est­ing to get behind the scenes and see just how much goes into putting on an event like a rock con­cert. And I now know first-hand that it’s very cool to have a friend who’s with the band and can score all access passes. Thanks, Whitney!

Recital Posters

March 24, 2006 2 comments

I’ve put up posters for my upcom­ing recital, both around the music build­ing and right here. My recital is Sat­ur­day April 1st at 8pm in FSU’s Dohnanyi Recital Hall. I’ll be play­ing a sonata by Devi­enne, Villa-Lobos’s Ciranda Das Sete Notas, a Tele­mann sonata on baroque bas­soon, and the Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Con­certo, which includes per­cus­sion. If you’re in Tal­la­has­see, you should come. I’ll most likely post record­ings after the recital as well.

Madison

February 11, 2006 Reply

I arrived in Madi­son yes­ter­day around noon. As we flew beneath the clouds, I could see that the ground was cov­ered in snow. My friend Keith, a per­cus­sion­ist who I knew at ASU, met me at the air­port. We drove straight to UW-Madison, where we met Les­ley, Keith’s wife and clar­inetist in one of my for­mer quin­tets. We went out for lunch, then Les­ley showed me around the music school and some of the rest of cam­pus. I rehearsed with my accom­pa­nist for an hour or so, then went to meet Marc Val­lon, the bas­soon professor.

Pro­fes­sor Val­lon is a very inter­est­ing guy — he’s both a grad­u­ate of and for­mer teacher at the Paris Con­ser­va­toire, and played in the Ams­ter­dam Baroque Orches­tra for 15 years. We went out for cof­fee (actu­ally, tea for me and ice cream for him) and talked for about an hour and a half. He was very inter­ested to find out that I’m involved in early music at FSU, and that I’m start­ing to learn baroque bas­soon. In the course of our con­ver­sa­tion, I found out that he owns about 10 bas­soons — a mix­ture of mod­ern Ger­man, mod­ern French, clas­si­cal, and baroque.

A band started play­ing near where we were sit­ting in the stu­dent union, so we repaired to his stu­dio. There, he showed me his new (about a week old) Heckel Crest bas­soon, let me peruse some music we’d been talk­ing about, and gave me a CD he recorded a few years ago. He then let me use some of his tools to work on my reeds. I’m not sure how many of the tools are his, and how many of them are the school’s but there was a ridicu­lous quan­tity in his office. For my fel­low bas­soon­ists, a par­tial list:

2 gougers, one of which is a brand new Rieger
2 pro­fil­ers, both Rieger
1 brand new Rieger top pro­filer
4–6 straight shapers
4 fold-over shaper han­dles
8–10 fold-over shaper tips
knives, man­drels, plaques, and mis­cel­la­neous tools galore
1 set of old-school hand-gouging tools

Plus, there’s a reed room in the base­ment of the build­ing that has a pro­filer and a shaper or two.
After meet­ing with Marc, I met up with Les­ley and Keith, and headed to their apart­ment. Bethany, another for­mer ASU clar­inetist who I hadn’t seen in awhile, came over and we went out to dinner.

Today, Les­ley and I went over to school early so she could prac­tice and I could warm up. I went up to the bas­soon stu­dio to wait for Prof. Val­lon to arrive. He’d told me and Eliz­a­beth, another DMA appli­cant, that we could use the stu­dio to warm-up and work on reeds. Once in the stu­dio, Eliz­a­beth and I talked and worked on reeds until it was time for her audi­tion. I ended up stay­ing for a few hours, rather than mov­ing down­stairs to a prac­tice room.

Through the course of the day, I met up with two other ASU friends — Laura, an oboist with whom I played in both a quin­tet and a trio, and Ben, another bassoonist.

More later…

About My Reed Tools

December 23, 2005 2 comments

BASSOON GEEKERY ALERT

Tired of tot­ing around all my reed tools in an old ugly tool­box, I ordered an alu­minum brief­case through eBay. I ripped out the inte­rior and replaced it with foam. After some care­ful plan­ning, I cut com­part­ments in the foam for my tools and sup­plies. Voila!

Old and Busted:

New Hot­ness:

I’ve Been Doing This All Wrong…

December 15, 2005 1 comment

I always think it’s pretty cool when some­one pays me to play music. After all, it’s some­thing I love and fre­quently would do for free. But, I’ve recently dis­cov­ered an even eas­ier way to make money: get­ting paid to not play music.

Pre­vi­ously the domain of bag­pipers and accor­dion­ists, the oppor­tu­nity to be paid not to play my instru­ment has recently been extended to me. This Sat­ur­day, the Tal­la­has­see Sym­phony is play­ing Handel’s Mes­siah. The instru­men­ta­tion for the ora­to­rio includes a small string sec­tion, oboes, bas­soons, trum­pets, and tim­pani. My part is sim­ply marked “fagotti.” The bas­soons play only in the cho­ruses (not the arias), and many sec­tions are marked “senza rip­i­eni” — lit­er­ally, “with­out fill­ing,” mean­ing one bas­soon only. So, I knew going into it that I wouldn’t be play­ing much. But, upon arriv­ing at the first rehearsal, I dis­cov­ered that the con­duc­tor doesn’t want a sec­ond bas­soon at all. But, as I’m con­tracted for three rehearsals and a con­cert, I still col­lect a check.

This pay-for-no-play opens up a whole realm of gig­ging pos­si­bil­i­ties. I could take on a num­ber of not-playing gigs at the same time. Heck, I could even play for one orches­tra while not-playing for five or six oth­ers. Per­haps I could even diver­sify: not-playing while not-cooking, not-teaching, not-selling-furniture, and not-offing-people-for-the-Russian-mafia.

Bassoon Antlers

December 12, 2005 Reply

Last week at our fort­nightly orches­tral excerpt class, one of our fresh­man bas­soon­istas, Joy, brought in pairs of foam rein­deer antlers that mount directly on the bell of a bas­soon. We ended up spend­ing the class play­ing bas­soon quar­tet arrange­ments of Christ­mas tunes, rather than hear­ing the solo from Bolero a dozen times (which was per­fectly fine by me). Below left, you can see those who were present pos­ing with our antlered axes. Below right, you can see Pro­fes­sor Keesecker’s stunned reac­tion to the whole affair. Click either for more photos.

Perdido Key

December 5, 2005 2 comments

Clar­inets and Bassoons

This week­end was my last jour­ney to Mobile for 2005. The rep was Christ­mas pops stuff — Sleigh Ride, one dance from The Nut­cracker, lots of arrange­ments of tra­di­tional car­ols and more recent Christ­mas tunes. We had Santa, elves, the full orches­tra, a soprano soloist, the Mobile Singing Chil­dren, and a large choir that (I think) was com­posed of choirs from the Uni­ver­sity of Mobile and other singers. We also had stand lights, strings of Christ­mas lights, and all the cor­re­spond­ing elec­tri­cal gear on stage. As a result, we were pretty short on space. The wood­winds were in a sin­gle line, as were the brass. I snapped the pic at right from my seat at the stage left end of the wood­wind row.

As often is the case with pops con­certs, many of the arrange­ments were quite good, some mediocre, and a cou­ple that were quite bad. The absolute worst, in my opin­ion, was from a suite that mixed stan­dard clas­si­cal pieces with Christ­mas car­ols. We only played one move­ment, “Lit­tle Bolero Boy,” and I can only hope that the oth­ers are bet­ter. As you may have guessed, “Lit­tle Bolero Boy” takes mate­r­ial from Ravel’s Bolero and the carol “Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy.” I can­not fathom why the arranger was under the impres­sion that this was a good idea. He’s taken what is (in my opin­ion, and that of many oth­ers) the most bor­ing piece of clas­si­cal music ever, taken out the only mar­gin­ally inter­est­ing part (the melody), and replaced it with one of the crap­pi­est Christ­mas car­ols in exis­tence (What’s that? You want to put “pa rum pum pum pum” at the end of every line? Sheer bril­liance!). At the rehearsal for the sec­ond con­cert (which I’ll get to later) the wind and brass sec­tions protested the piece, demand­ing that we play it faster and thereby fin­ish­ing it sooner. Our demands were hap­pily met.

On Sat­ur­day morn­ing, I headed down to Dauphin Island, south of Mobile. The drive was nice, cross­ing a num­ber of bridges over rivers and a very long one over the Intra­coastal Water­way to the island itself. My main objec­tive on the island was the Audubon Bird Sanc­tu­ary. I walked the trails with my cam­era at the ready, only to dis­cover that the sanc­tu­ary had been hit pretty hard by the recent hur­ri­canes, and there were almost no birds present. Small won­der, as the area labeled as wet­lands on the map is now choked with fallen trees and beach sand. I also stopped by Fort Gaines, a pre-Civil War fort that was involved in the Bat­tle of Mobile. (This bat­tle gave us Farragut’s famous mis­quote about tor­pe­does. What he actu­ally said was “Damn the tor­pe­does! Cap­tain Dray­ton, go ahead! Jou­ett, full speed!”) I did not, how­ever, have time to do any­thing other than walk around the out­side. I’ll have to leave that for another trip.

My Bal­cony View

On Sun­day, we played a sec­ond con­cert — with a smaller orches­tra, with­out the choirs, sans Santa, and with slightly dif­fer­ent rep. I knew that the con­cert was a run-out, at the Per­dido Key Resort near Pen­sacola. What I didn’t know was that we out-of-towners were being put up in the resort itself. I had to com­plain to our per­son­nel man­ager about the con­di­tions under which I was being forced to work. I mean, just look at the view I had to deal with from my bal­cony! We didn’t have rehearsal until three, so I basi­cally had the whole morn­ing and early after­noon for beach and pool time. I didn’t bring a suit, but “surf”/souvenir shops are a dime a dozen in the area, so I was able to pick a a cheap suit quickly.

The con­cert was held in the hotel’s ball­room, which had been dec­o­rated with poin­set­tias and other fes­tive accou­trements. Our per­for­mance was the main event in a fundraiser for the United Way, which also included a silent auc­tion and some other things. The fun part was that all the donors/guests/whoever all had ample time to access the mul­ti­ple bars that had been set up in the lobby and the silent auc­tion room. In fact, we couldn’t get every­one herded into the ball­room, and ended up start­ing ten to fif­teen min­utes late. As we were wait­ing, I got bored and started play­ing ran­dom tunes just for fun. At one point, I started into the bari sax part of Glenn MIller’s “In The Mood.” Evie, the prin­ci­pal bas­soon­ist (who I later found out used to play alto sax six nights a week in a big band), soon joined in on the melody line. Then, I noticed that one of the bassists had started into a walk­ing bassline behind us. I started laugh­ing too hard to keep playing.

We had the same herd­ing prob­lem after inter­mis­sion, only this time it was worse. So, we just started play­ing. Even­tu­ally, every­one caught on. We gave a short encore at the end, then began pack­ing up. When the con­duc­tor came back out to get his scores, a guy who’d become quite acquainted with the bar ser­vice started yelling “More! More!” in the sort of voice one might expect to hear at a WWE event. Luck­ily, we were out of things to play at that point.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

October 27, 2005 1 comment

Lately, I’ve been work­ing on Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Bas­soon Con­certo. I wanted to work on some­thing new (to me) for this year’s con­certo com­pe­ti­tion. I con­sulted with pro­fes­sor Keesecker, and he sug­gested either the Jolivet Con­certo or the Zwilich. Both are tough, but he said that the Zwilich is more both audi­ence– and performer-friendly. I ordered a CD, lis­tened to the piece, and decided to play it. Another rea­son for choos­ing the Zwilich is that she is on fac­ulty at FSU. She occu­pies a spe­cial chair, and is only in res­i­dence for a week each semes­ter. A few weeks ago, I found out that she’d soon be in town, and I man­aged to get an appoint­ment with her.

I was quite ner­vous in the days lead­ing up to my les­son. I’d been prac­tic­ing the piece like crazy. After all, it’s not every day that you play a Pulitzer Prize-winning com­poser’s piece for her. When I arrived at the appointed time, I found that Dr. Zwilich had been double-booked. I had some time to spare, so I let the other stu­dent, who is pur­su­ing a Mas­ters in com­po­si­tion, go first. I waited out­side for half an hour, then my turn came.

Dr. Zwilich was very laid-back and friendly. She said that she’d enjoyed writ­ing for the bas­soon, although she doesn’t com­pletely under­stand the instru­ment, and cer­tainly doesn’t under­stand why any­one would want to play it. I have to say that I often agree with her. Appar­ently when Nancy Goeres, the prin­ci­pal bas­soon­ist of the Pitts­burgh Sym­phony and ded­i­ca­tee of the work, exam­ined the first move­ment of the work-in-progress, she said that she liked it, but that it needed to be harder to be a con­certo. So, Zwilich turned around and wrote a sec­ond move­ment based on octa­tonic scales with lots of six­teenth note runs at quar­ter note equals 168. When Goeres received that move­ment she asked, “What did I do, wave a red cape at a bull?”

I started by ask­ing a few ques­tions about artic­u­la­tion, phras­ing, and her nota­tion. Then, I played the first move­ment and much of the sec­ond (and final) move­ment. Dr. Zwilich seemed quite happy with what I was doing, and was com­pli­men­tary of my play­ing. She had a few gen­eral com­ments about the first move­ment, and offered some sug­ges­tions for attack­ing the blaz­ingly fast sec­ond move­ment. She also wanted me to change a cou­ple of things in the sec­ond move­ment cadenza. For­tu­nately, many of her sug­ges­tions and changes will actu­ally make the piece eas­ier to play.

We ended up going twenty min­utes over into the next person’s time, so I got almost the full hour I’d been allot­ted, despite her being dou­ble booked. Before I left, she com­pli­mented my play­ing again, and asked me to keep her posted about my progress in the con­certo com­pe­ti­tion. I’m very glad that I had the chance to talk to and be coached by Ellen Zwilich. It’s not often that a musi­cian, let alone a stu­dent, is offered the chance to work one-on-one with an emi­nent com­poser on one of their pieces.

I’m working in Mobile?

May 17, 2005 4 comments

I found out today that I won the 2nd bas­soon posi­tion in Mobile! Unfor­tu­nately, the entire text of the e-mail inform­ing me of this was:

“Con­grat­u­la­tions, you won our sec­ond bas­soon open­ing. I’ll be send­ing you dates for the sea­son and I look for­ward to work­ing with you.”

So, I still don’t know any­thing about pay, hous­ing, sched­ule, etc. I’d really like to be able to take the job, but it’ll have to work out just right. The orches­tra only plays about one con­cert a month, so it’s cer­tainly not a full-time job. I have to be able to fit it in with school, teach­ing, FSU’s Sym­phony and the Tal­la­has­see Sym­phony. We’ll see what happens.

Bassoon on the Bay

May 13, 2005 1 comment

So, I just had my audi­tion for the 2nd bas­soon spot in the Mobile Sym­phony. That’s Mobile, Alabama, not a rov­ing band of maraud­ing musi­cians. It went pretty well, for the most part. I played an excerpt from Beethoven 4 (one of our most hated and feared excerpts) too fast, and couldn’t slow it down. That sucked. But, the sheer amount of music I played will prob­a­bly work in my favor. After I’d played my solo piece, they just said “Start play­ing the list in any order you’d like.” I was a bit taken aback by this, as I’d never been given the choice before. That, and the list was 14 excerpts long — far more than I was expect­ing to play. I think I ended up play­ing eleven.

The per­son­nel man­ager said that they’d be in touch on Mon­day. Even if I’m lucky enough to win the spot, the sched­ule (tak­ing into account the four hour drive between Tal­la­has­see and Mobile) might pre­clude me actu­ally being able to do it. I’ll have to wait and see.

Dancing Dogs

April 19, 2005 2 comments

I spent much of my birth­day in a video record­ing ses­sion with the Uni­ver­sity Sym­phony. We were record­ing Ellen Taafe Zwilich’s “Peanuts Gallery” for a DVD and broad­cast on pub­lic TV. The morn­ing started with a dress rehearsal (in full con­cert dress for the ben­e­fit of video) at 9 am. After two hours of rehearsal and a lunch break, we came back to do a ‘con­cert’ for some groups of ele­men­tary school stu­dents and var­i­ous other peo­ple. We ran through the piece twice for the audi­ence, with the cam­eras rolling the whole time.

Fol­low­ing that, we did an encore of one move­ment — “Snoopy Does the Samba” — with (what else?) Snoopy doing the samba on stage. After the per­for­mance, most of the kids left, and those from one school came on stage to ask us ques­tions. This por­tion was unscripted, which meant that it took awhile for the kids to get up the courage to ask us any­thing. Very few kids were inter­ested in the bas­soon until they spot­ted my reed case with mul­ti­ple col­ors of reeds. Once the kids left for their punch and cook­ies, we went back to the piece, record­ing patches for things that weren’t quite right dur­ing the performance.

New World

March 22, 2005 1 comment

Our Lit­tle Slice of Paradise

So on Sun­day, my friend Chris and I made the trek down to Miami to audi­tion for the New World Sym­phony. The gig is a sweet one if you can get it — hous­ing pro­vided in Miami Beach, play­ing in an orches­tra full of good play­ers, lots of free time to prac­tice or do what­ever. The eight-hour drive down to Miami wasn’t so bad. Traf­fic wasn’t an issue until we got to Miami Beach. Then it was a nightmare.

The streets were packed with spring break­ers, euro­pean tourists, and who­ever else par­ties on Sun­day night in Miami. It took us 20 min­utes just to move a few blocks. At one point, we found our­selves amidst a bunch of peo­ple who were all car­ry­ing around plants. They didn’t seem to be tak­ing them any­where, and there wasn’t a vis­i­ble plant source. It was just peo­ple milling around with plants. When we got to our hotel, we dis­cov­ered that there was no park­ing there, and we had to find a spot a few blocks away. This was when it hit us that Miami Beach is an expen­sive place: park­ing was $20. Luck­ily, we could leave Chris’s car there until it was time to leave the next day.

Back at the hotel, we took stock of our tiny some­what shabby room. $130 a night in Miami Beach doesn’t get you much. Orig­i­nally, we’d been think­ing about cram­ming 5 peo­ple into one room. Had the other three not bailed, we would’ve had to get to know each other really well that night — I’m not sure there was even room for any­one to sleep on the floor. Our view was of a charm­ing rooftop and eye-catching back alley. The TV remote was held together with pack­ing tape. The shower pipe leaked, spray­ing a stream of water over the shower cur­tain. The front desk had one iron to lend to guests, but no iron­ing board. At least we were only stay­ing one night.
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Contra-ct

January 7, 2005 1 comment

So, I’m down in Fort Myers play­ing with the South­west Florida Sym­phony again. They called me up Mon­day night to ask if I could come down and play con­tra­bas­soon on Mahler 5. I agreed imme­di­ately, not fully con­sid­er­ing the fact that I’d have to leave the same day classes start. I man­aged to work all that out though, and against all odds arrived in time for the first rehearsal Wednes­day night. Any­way, the con­tra­bas­soon I’m using is on loan from the Venice Sym­phony (Florida, not Italy). This is the last line of their rental/loan contract:

One won­ders what hap­pened that made this a nec­es­sary clause…

Wooten Brothers

January 2, 2005 Reply

Every time I’m home in Ten­nessee, I try to make it to Nashville to hear the Wooten Broth­ers play. Fans of Bela Fleck and the Fleck­tones will know the names Vic­tor Wooten and Roy “Future­man” Wooten. Well, there are three more Wooten Broth­ers who play at 3rd and Lind­s­ley in Nashville pretty much every Wednes­day night — Regi (gui­tar), Joseph (key­boards), and Rudy (sax). They fill out the band with other local musi­cians, usu­ally John Billings on bass, Ray­mond Massey on drums, and Roger “The Rock” Williams on saxes and flute. The show is always awe­some, a mix of funk, soul, R&B, disco, and what­ever else they feel like play­ing (Outkast’s “Car­o­line” is a fairly recent addi­tion to their reper­toire). The thing that makes the show so great is its unpre­dictabil­ity. In addi­tion to play­ing ran­dom songs when they feel like it, hardly a night goes by when they don’t bring a num­ber of guests onstage from the audi­ence. Some­times, these are just some of Regi’s gui­tar and bass stu­dents. Other times, you get really lucky.

The first two guests last week were Joe’s thirteen-year-old son, a drum­mer, and his friend, a twelve-year-old bassist. They were both quite good, age notwith­stand­ing. As they were leav­ing the stage, Regi shouted into the micro­phone “Vic! Where’s Vic?” Our eyes lit up. Sure enough, Vic­tor Wooten was mak­ing his way up on stage. As if that wasn’t enough, Regi next invited Den­nis Cham­bers to come up and play drums. Cham­bers played with Par­lia­ment Funkadelic, among oth­ers. When these two took the stage, I knew I needed a bet­ter view than the one I had from the back of the bal­cony. I spot­ted an open space on the floor near the front of the bal­cony, and went for it. The per­for­mance Vic­tor and Den­nis (along with the rest of the band) put on was sim­ply amaz­ing. They each took fairly extended solos, but man­aged to keep it all inter­est­ing. Aside from that, it was a real treat to see what such high-caliber play­ers could do on a fairly sim­ple tune like “Fire” by the Ohio Players.

After they’d played for awhile, Vic­tor and Den­nis left the stage to wild applause, and we started think­ing about leav­ing. Just as we’d made up our minds to head out, Regi again went to the micro­phone. “Roy Future, come up on stage!” We sat back down. In addi­tion to Future­man on drums, they brought up singer Claude McK­night, mem­ber of Take 6 and older brother of Brian McK­night.
Any­way, I’ve been work­ing on this post for far too long. Moral of the story: if you find your­self in Nashville on a Wednes­day night, beg bor­row or steal five bucks and go see the Wootens at 3rd and Lindsley.

Sunny Fort Myers

November 19, 2004 Reply

So, I’m cur­rently in Fort Myers, on the Gulf Coast in south­ern Florida. I’m play­ing 2nd bas­soon with the South­west Florida Sym­phony. They had a last sec­ond need for a bas­soon­ist, and appar­ently couldn’t find any­one closer than Tal­la­has­see (which is over 400 miles away). I Found out about it Mon­day night, and had to leave Wednes­day at noon. I wasn’t sure I’d make the rehearsal, as Mapquest gives the drive a time of 6.5 hours, and the rehearsal started at 7. It turned out not to be a prob­lem, though.

The pro­gram for the week­end is a bunch of opera stuff — excerpts from Car­men, the entire sec­ond act of La Boheme, and lit­tle instru­men­tal inter­ludes from three or four other operas. The soloists are won­der­ful, although they haven’t been intro­duced to us yet, so I don’t know exactly who they are. I imag­ine I can read their bios in the pro­gram at the con­cert tonight. The orches­tra sounds quite good, and every­one has been very nice.

The orches­tra pro­vides hous­ing, and I had the option of shar­ing a hotel room with some­one or stay­ing in someone’s home. I chose to stay in a home. They placed me with this won­der­ful older lady, a British ex-pat who spent much of her life in Michi­gan. Since retir­ing, she’s spent alot of time trav­el­ing the world, and has lots of inter­est­ing sto­ries to tell.

I’m writ­ing now from a pub­lic library, as I can’t seem to find any places with free wi-fi access. Barnes and Noble has a hotspot, but their rates are fairly exor­bi­tant. Any­way, I’m off now to explore Fort Myers before tonight’s con­cert. Oh, and for those of you up north — it’s 80 degrees, and I’m wear­ing shorts.

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