Musica Intermissione
Musica Intermissione
The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray ...”
A performance practice journal meditation, following upon our previous reflections, in a time of social distancing, revealing deeper issues and cultural contracts coming into play.
Monday night’s rehearsal of the Queensland Wind Orchestra (QWO) was opened by our conductor, David Law, offering us two options that were being presented by the orchestra board, in light of the large gathering guidelines in Australia:
A. Preceding with the rehearsals and performance of our April 4 concert; assuming that no one in the ensemble becomes exposed to the virus or sick.
B. Cancel the concert now, postponing it to the same time period next year in 2021
We would take a vote at intermission, via text message, and be going ahead with the result.
We then proceeded to rehearse our opening work and then have our first run through the programs’ Euphonium concerto, with our esteemed soloist Fletcher Mitchell, (an International exponent of Australian Euphonium concerto literature) who is also a auditioned member of our ensemble. It went well. The group sounded great and the music was taking shape. Then, we had our break and voted.
The QWO is an auditioned, community music ensemble, professing semi-professional standards. It is made up of accomplished musicians, who are also professionals in related areas: music teacher - band directors, physiotherapists, nurses, doctors, engineers, IT specialists and other educated geeks, plus university music students (with three current DMA candidates). It’s a serious ensemble, made up of interesting and accomplished people, who devote their time and energy to successfully making the highest quality wind band music for themselves and their community for the last sixteen years; regularly taking out top position in the Australian Band Championships. We perform in concert halls, in parks, at music conferences and in special musical events.
On Monday night however we voted to stop the music. It was a difficult, consensus decision, based on our vote, which ended the rehearsal with our break. We handed in our music and folders and then awkwardly hung about, discussing the situation and saying good-bye; for what would be an unknown period of time (forever, for all that we knew).
That was my position, days away from my seventy second birthday, a personal stance, that I had taken since auditioning and joining the ensemble 6 ½ years ago, in returning to active performance. I have approached each rehearsal and every concert as my last! I never allowed myself to assume that there would be ‘another’ opportunity to make music, of this quality, or at this level of performance. It was a privilege and honour. Indeed, an opportunity so vital and important to me that I commuted from my rural home to the city, five hours round trip (350kms) every time, in order to participate and perform. It’s important to me and now, temporarily at least, gone.
I agreed with the choice we made and appreciated the ethics behind our decision and also its importance of to us as an ensemble on several levels:
A Music is a relationship of the self to the composer, music, ensemble and audience
B Concerts are sacred agreements to show up and perform at X time in Y place. How to honour this commitment, probably on-line, becomes the next discussion
C We followed the ethical principle of “do no harm” (if possible)
D We accepted the personal sacrifice of forgoing “what we want” … Play Music!
E Respecting the group consensus, bonding in new, precarious, personal ways by ironically agreeing to not meet or perform for a foreseeable future.
It was confusing and sad as we dis-banded ... no way to get around that condition. Neither should we have, as this is a counter intuitive shift, being accepted, in adjusting an important and vital human, culturally important relationship; on many levels. It requires our sincere acknowledgement and grief in order to get IT. Accepting the situation, feeling it, allows for the possibility to adopt andmove on from the former “known-knowns” into fresher more relevant possibilities.
“Out beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field; I will meet you there.” Rumi