Our third performance was today. The Green Room was buzzing with criticisms of Cathy Burch's review. Bruce said "it's just birdcage lining." He said she is not trained in music. (She is, in fact, a food reviewer who has been given the music beat.) He said the horrible, ludicrous reviews are not Cathy's fault. He said the administration of the Arizona Daily Star bears the responsibility for giving her that job. Bruce said we should just let it go. If we poo-poo her criticisms, then we must also poo-poo her praise. He finished by saying we shouldn't try to take on Cathy, because we'd lose.
Several of George's tempi today were novel. The I-am-so-vast passage in the Paulus that I wrote about this morning — well, that tempo was pulled right out of his a**, er, thin air. Unbelieveable. We totally blew those three measures, with all thanks to George. There was one place in the Orff where he miscued the women and brought us in two beats too early. Salute to Homero on tympani, who realized what was happening and jumped ahead to join us. Gail mentioned that George also miscued the men at one point, but they followed Bruce's admonition to stay the course and just ignore George.
I have two favorite quotes from Bruce that I will share with the musicians in this audience. The first, with a salute to mixolydian mode, is when he tells us that a particular thing we have just sung was in the hypomixocrappian. The other thing he said today that brought a laugh was that one phrase was a messescendo.
So that's it. Our fourth season is now history and we're on break until September 10th.
This is a very welcome break!
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