I take out a piece of paper. “HOLLY = COOL,” I write across the top. Neil takes it and writes, “NOT” after it.
“Look,” I say, “I’ve got a hole in my jeans.”
“That makes you automatically cool.”
“Yeah, I know it.”
“Now you’ve gotta get rid of the purple socks.”
“I dunno. I think it makes me look like I don’t care. That’s cool.”
“Ehhh, maybe.”
Gary taps my knee. “Six, two, three, four…” he says, pointing at a group of rests on his music. Neil and I pick up our horns. I try to find the corresponding group of rests on my part. Where did he point? What number are we on now?
The conductor looks at us – our cue. Gary plays, exaggerating his entrance in a humanitarian attempt to bring in Neil and me, but I still don’t know where we are. As the first trombone, I look blankly at the conductor in an effort to make him realize the problem and stop. He stops.
“Trombones, we’re eight after E.”
“OK, sorry.”
He starts again.
I miss it again. I make a confused look.
“Trombones, we’re in two.” I’d been counting in four. Oopsy.
“Oh, sorry, got it.”
He starts again.
We play. For two bars. This is followed by another one hundred, seventy-eight bars of rest. Somewhere in the middle of it the first trumpet turns around. “Anybody know where we are?”
He gets three shrugs in reply.
2 comments:
Hmmm, is it always that way?
Kinda, yeah. Trombones rest a LOT. This was a conductors' orchestra, which means the student conductors practiced on us. I felt a little bad about not paying more attention, but the reality is that if you're going to lead anything less than a high-level professional group (and sometimes even with those), the low brass will be goofing off a bit. We're like the bad kids on the back of the bus. Best for the student conductors to get used to it early on, really.
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