into the realm of what's not written

Date: 10/12/13
Orchestra: Chamber
Attendance: good
Repertoire Rehearsed: same ol' two pieces
Little things I noticed: I guess from now on, walking into a room where a dance class was held a moment ago, means walk into a ac blasting frozen death trap. I hope this trend doesn't keep up during winter...
Note:
I think we had a pretty productive rehearsal today. It felt pretty focused to me. In terms of rehearsal technique, I used the same method I used for CYO a couple days before, which was to pick a small section and to concentrate on it. It is what I call a "quality over quantity" method :)

Once you learn how to work a small section in great details, you can, and (sometimes even subconsciously) will, apply the same method for all of the other sections, and even to the whole of the piece.

What's important for me is that I don't talk about how to enable you to play the notes, but that I talk about in what way, should the notes be played, how to play the notes in those specific ways. I want you  to think bigger. I want you to think of the world beyond notes. The world of music. Notes, intonation, basic rhythm and fundamental ensemble skills are definitely among things that we should talk about, but I want these topics to be talked about as review basis. Let's check each other out to see if we are all there at those basic level. But let's try not to dwell on it. I'm not saying we should ignore, but I'm saying let's practice well enough to graduate from those trivial problems as quickly as possible, so we can do things that are much more interesting, more meaningful, and a thousand times more fun. Let's think of your act as an effect. Every little thing you do on stage will change the effect you have on your audience. In rehearsals, we need to be talking about what exactly we are going to show the people and the world. We need to be discussing what kind of musical effect we want to have on the audience, and how to go about doing that.

We are way too intelligent, creative, bold, talented, and imaginative to be stuck on the superficialities of what's "written" on the pages. We need to think what is "implied".

Let's talk more about this next time.