Rehearsal Vampires
Saturday, August 9, 2008 at 08:27AM Here's a quick story, which I'll entitle "Hot Coffee and the Wind-Driven Rehearsal Room Door". And then a question.
By the time I'd been Director of Instrumental Music for 'the big church' for seven or eight years, I had a pretty good horn section. Eight or ten players sort of orbited around and through it, and I was always on the lookout for new players. Somebody worked with somebody who knew somebody named Amanda, who was supposed to blow a pretty mean alto, and I'd finally contacted her and scheduled her to play.
Our rehearsal room was in a portable classroom next to the church building, and on this particular night the wind was blowing hard. Like maybe a steady 25 or 30mph. Always in a rush, I grabbed the horn charts (a pretty big stack), and coffee in a styrofoam cup. Hot coffee. The wind practically ripped the papers out of my hands, as I hurried down the walkway toward the portable. I held the coffee cup in my teeth, opened the door and held it with my foot, grabbed the coffee again with my right hand, kicked the door open hard and stuck my elbow out to catch it. The elbow with coffee. The door came back like a giant fly swatter and the coffee ended up down the entire front of me, from head to belt. It was dripping from my glasses and soaked my shirt as I stepped inside, saw a woman I didn't recognize, and said, "You must be Amanda. Hi. I'm Ed."
Fortunately, she had a sense of humor.
Here's my question:
What are your rehearsal vampires? What sucks the life out of them, brings them to a grinding halt or spins them off down a dead-end path?
Reader Comments (4)
Happy birthday Ed. I guess you can't rehearse because it's your birthday? Does that qualify?
It's not my birthday until tomorrow, but all the celebrating will be tonight. Including my mother-in-laws unbelievable cake.
First - HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Scond - about rehearsals. What sucks the life out for me is when people come late and expect the rest of us to stop and either catch them up, or at the very worst START OVER from the beginning!
I agree with Jo-Ellen - lateness sucks. I think the other big killer is over-rehearsing. If we've got it after the second time - and we have the feel right - leave it alone. If we over-rehearse, I forget what the song is about and it's just syllables I need to get through to get to the end. It doesn't mean anything.