Orchestra woes, concert craziness and a hat of utter fabulousness

Friday night was the OCMCO concert... which meant that I was stressed all day on Friday, until it was done! In most every concert there has been a passage or two which has been hard to play... mostly there are lots of notes, at speed, and it's a bit hairy to get through, but there is generally enough other noise going on to cover my shortcomings. However, in this concert the second half opened with the choir singing 'Goin' Home' and there was a totally exposed bar where only the bassoons and clarinets were playing, and we were only playing two notes. Not hard, right? You would think.... but I was terrified of these two notes! G flat and D flat, the two worst notes on my bassoon (excepting E flat, which is pretty rough as well.) Nobody else in the orchestra is playing at this point. No choir. Just four instruments, and one of them was me. Playing the worst note on the bassoon. As hard as I practiced, I could never get it in tune. It was always horribly sharp and always sounded dreadful. So spending the day on Friday just waiting to screw up in front of hundreds of people was not much fun!

In our last minute-rehearsal I had a brainwave and convinced the 1st bassoonist to switch parts with me. He had easier notes. So we switched (bless him forever!) and we made it through, which meant I could finally relax and enjoy the rest of the concert.

In every concert that I have played with this wonderful group, I'm usually pretty confident on the first piece and the last piece, and have always had a couple of mess-ups somewhere in the middle. This concert (which was fabulous, as always) was a little different!

As we started to play the opening number it was all going swimmingly for a while, until I had to start playing down low. As soon as I went down the register, instead of wonderful, sonorous low notes, instead my bassoon sounded like it was just farting at me. I couldn't figure it out at all, but I was starting to get seriously panicked. I had no idea what I was going to do. Then I had a couple of bars rest and looked the instrument over and found that a couple of keys were not moving, which sent me into full blown absolute panic mode! It was the opening number, the orchestra was on stage for the first entire half and there was no way I was going to get offstage to fix it. Fortunately in the next few bars rest I was able to move the jammed key and get things going again... but it was a truly scary moment.

Then in the last piece, with choir and orchestra at full volume, my reed fell off! I was holding a note over about 12 bars, and halfway through the reed just got loose. I had to try and jam it back on the bocal by just pushing it with my mouth... and it worked. The minute the conductor lowered his arms the reed fell off for good. What a way to finish the night!

Because I don't have any pictures of the concert, instead I am putting up a picture of Kate in her hat of utter fabulousness. This hat was given to me by a friend who plays viola in the orchestra (see, there's the relevance!) and it goes everywhere with us. Wherever I go with Kate I hear people cooing behind me 'Just look at that baby! Just look at that hat!' I am not sure which gets more attention, the baby or the hat. It really is a show-stopper! Thank you, Mary-Margaret!