Nine days and four rehearsals later, A Field Guide to Natural History is coming together. On Thursday, it was decided that I would conduct; on Friday, we cut out two more movements; yesterday, we had our first uninterrupted run through; and today, we began to work in earnest on expressive details. Tomorrow will be our last rehearsal in Provo.
As I expected, the guys have done a great job pulling the piece together. I’m also excited for the other pieces on the program. Eric wrote a great one for himself, Dave, and Ron (on bass, clarinet, and marimba respectively), and Dave brought a cool jazz tune of his. All together, Eric’s put together a great recital.
Funny story about the rehearsals: I hadn’t conducted instrumentalists for years, so I was a bit nervous about the undertaking. Last night, I told this to a friend, who was surprised I wasn’t immediately confident at conducting my own piece. “After all,” she said, “you wrote it.”
Her logic reminded me of the time in sixth grade when I wrote this tie fighter video game in QBasic. The premise was simple: You’re a tie fighter at the top of the screen. You had to hit the x-wings and a-wings flying and shooting at you before they reached you. I installed it on a computer in my classroom, where, to my teacher’s dismay, it became quite popular. After a few weeks, people were surprised I didn’t have the high score: “After all, you wrote it.”
“But writing it doesn’t mean I’m good at it,” I protested.
Some things never change.
