everyone looked lovely on this picture day

Date: 10/03/13
Orchestra: CYO
Attendance: very good
Repertoire rehearsed: New piece and a bit of Mozart
Little things I noticed: You all looked great today. There is something about dressing up from time to time. I think it helps sharpen your minds sometimes too. Speaking of dressing up, I'm looking forward to our holloween day rehearsal :)

Note: 
So the new piece by Dvorak has a lot of tempo changes as you all noticed. But other than that, the piece is pretty straight forward. The notes are easy, the rhythm is easy, and it is in an easy key for everyone (for once). So with this piece, I am aiming to hone our ensemble skills - being aware of, and paying attention to what's going on in the music and your surroundings, paying attention to me (the conductor), being flexible with time, and listening carefully to your colleagues, so that your sounds are united, not only in a rhythmical sense, but also in terms of timber, character, and quality.
The easier the piece gets, the more I am going to demand from you, so brace yourselves :)

I thought though, in this rehearsal, you guys sounded so much more mature and even confident, than you did in the last two rehearsals, which is great! There were a lot more noticeable differences in dynamics, and characters, and I definitely heard some changes in character of the sounds you are making, which is wonderful. Keep that up! Once everyone in the orchestra is able to control their sounds at will, we will sound AMAZING.

Just remember, playing the correct notes is not your goal here. Music making is much more than that. All of your notes are representations of an image or an idea, or a part of an image or an idea. To make music as an ensemble, we need to collectively agree on the image that we will "paint", and then agree on HOW we will "paint" those ideas and images. A musician is a painter, a poet, a dancer, sculptor and an actor. Our job is to tell stories just like all other artists, but our tool of choice is SOUND - one of the least developed of all five senses that humans have. That's why music is difficult. We need to be EXTRA sensitive to be able to hear such subtle differences and understand them, and then reproduce them in exactly the way we want to, so that we can hope that the audience hears our little stories that we are making.

NEXT REHEARSAL is a sectional rehearsal. Mr. Lin will coach the strings and Mr. Luckinbil will take the winds/brass downstairs (but please meet at the gallery first!). I will miss you guys, but I will be looking forward to hearing your vastly improved sounds in the following rehearsal. See you then!