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.

Things I've been doing.

I've had a social week so I thought I would share some of that with you.

First of all- my new flatmates are settling in nicely. The only issue so far is that Jenny used to work for Cutco and so has a large collection of very sharp knives. This is hardly a problem since having nice knives is a very good thing indeed. However- her collection of nice knives combined with my (much smaller collection) of nice knives means that our cutlery drawer is now a: overstuffed and b: dangerous to put your hand in to... It 's also been interesting figuring out what I've told them about how the flat works and what I haven't. For instance- the power went off for a while on Sunday because I hadn't remembered to point out that someone ought to put more money on the little key thing that is how we pay for electricity. Oops. Also- those weak pathetic showers that they've been taking in the morning? Yeah, there is a water pump that makes those all nice and cozy, but the switch for it is in the living room. (where all power switches relating to the bathroom should go, don't you think? So handy and sensical.) Jenny and I have been having some good bonding moments (talking till 3am one night, oops.) but John Henry is still quiet, we'll see how that continues on. He is a philosopher after all.

I saw a show last week- one of the technical theatre students at GSMD had noticed that the theatre was free for two days at the beginning of term so he finagled his way in to getting to use it. (Impressive.) The show he ended up producing is called "The Last 5 Years" and is one of my favorite musicals. The instrumental parts are all soloistic and there are themes that come back in just altered enough forms for it to be tremendously exciting musically as well as having excellent lyrics. The show is about a couple (only 2 actors in the whole thing) singing about the last 5 years of their relationship- but the man is singing forwards in time and the woman is singing backwards- so they never actually sing together. The whole show is one solo after another- it's a tough show to pull off. Anyhow the whole thing was student led and performed (though they did get the main director for the acting department to direct the show- again, impressive.) and it was FABULOUS. I've never seen a show where the band and the actors were more integrated. And authentically, organically integrated too. It was a joy to watch and I feel privileged that I got to see it. (Seriously, it was impressive.)

The dinner club folks have apparently given up on cooking and so this time we got together at an Indian restaurant on Brick Lane along with another American couple that Dave met on his plane ride to London: Anna and Trevor. They are wonderful and the six of us spent most of the evening chattering away and having three threads of conversation run at once. It was fun and had the added benefit of being relatively easy to get home from for everyone. (That has been a standing problem with the dinner club group- whose house to have supper at! No one really wants to be the person who is always traveling.)

On Saturday I went with Rob and Gwen to go see a friend of theirs play a gig in South London. Tom Norris- who is a violinist with the LSO but has taken a year off to try getting his rock band off the ground (check him out on iTunes, guys!) it was an interesting gig because he was just one of four bands and man was his stuff different from everyone else. The band has only been playing together for a short while but they were tight and it was fun to watch them. Also, it isn't often that you see an instrumentalist warming up on Paganini before a rock show....

Consort is tonight- we have a concert on Friday for the Early Music Open Day at school. There are only two legitimate students in the group, but that won't stop us! I've also got my art-opening-gamba-solo-background-music gig on Tuesday so wish me luck on that one!

Oh, and my mother will be pleased to know that I have been applying for more work. Only two jobs so far, but progress! That still counts as progress

I'm losing all my stuff, but I'm finding it again too

Today I managed to lose (and then retrieve) at some point during the day: my favorite water bottle (it is green and printed to look like grass), my only US to UK plug adaptor, my gamba, and my wallet.

This wasn't in one go- like I left a pile of stuff somewhere forgot where it was and eventually found it all again in the same place. No, this was me hemorrhaging my stuff. I left my water bottle on the DVD rack in the Barbican library, my gamba in the recording studio, my wallet was left on the check out counter at the library but I ended up having to sign for it down in the main Barbican foyer because the library staff was on it and being protective of the wallet which I really appreciated, and my plug adaptor was-to be fair- just under my foot but it was the last thing I lost and I was at that point I was ready to count it.

But Casey, why were you carrying around your gamba anyway? Because there was consort today!! A couple of weeks ago I saw Vlad, a cellist I've worked with a couple of times, carrying around a gamba and demanded that he let me play it. He was gracious enough to let me fool around on it for a while and we started talking about how wonderful viols are. I mentioned that I owned a tenor, he mentioned that there was now a consort at school, and I expressed my ardent desire to be a part of it.

So he hooked me up, and guess who it is run by? Alison, the cellist I originally saw at that now infamous Academy of Ancient Music concert my senior year at Interlochen. How totally cool is that? She says she vaguely remembers me from seven years ago, which I think is pretty darn neat.

We had a wonderful time playing six part consort music and I just love playing consort music. I really do. It was also a wonderful treat to get some playing time in that has absolutely nothing to do with my final project. So next week I get to do it again *and* I get a lesson! So cool.