Gambaness

Last week was very gamba heavy. On Tuesday I did a gig for an art opening. I was playing background music that I was improvising on my tenor gamba. (Very historically accurate.) I was prepared to do about 20 minutes but then the speaker was late so I ended up playing for an hour.

Do you know how terrifying playing improvised music, by yourself, for an hour, without stopping is? Can you tell from the photograph how much I'm panicking? Although the music got embarrassingly repetitive by the end of the hour, it was still pretty exciting to do. It was like when I did that three mile long crew race in the single shell. Okay, so I came in half an hour after the other person- but I didn't get disqualified. If I had stopped at all I would have been. It was like that- long and tiring and draining- but I DID it, which is pretty darn cool.

Then, on Friday the gamba consort had our world debut. The school was having an open day for prospective early music students so there were a number of concerts. Ours was titled "Six Hundred Years of Contemporary Music" which is the GEEKIEST thing ever. The medieval ensemble played (with a drum! with a gut snare! how cool is that?) then the consort played, there was a recorder sonata, some Handel arias, and a lengthy piece on the new piano forte. It was a fun concert. I realized that I must not have performed much recently because I was nervous and I'm never nervous. Well, rarely.

On Monday consort was back to our sight reading ways. I love reading from facscilmilies. It's like a fun puzzle- is that random dot a smudged bit of important musical information (like, a note?) or is it just a dot?! Only time will tell.