Chicago Bass Ensemble

A very short post.

Things are feeling good.

I hope I didn’t jinx it. Audition is next Tuesday.

I am having a serious case of why-am-I-doing-this.

Ah, yes, it has been a long time since I wrote an ‘audition daily blog’ post, giving the lie to the “daily” part of that title. But I told you that was going to happen.

Getting motivated is a real struggle this time around. It’s summer, so it’s warm. The rest of my family is ‘out of school,’ so there hasn’t been a lot of structure to the days or even the weekends, which often means watching Master Chef or going to a movie on an evening when I should be practicing.

And it seems harder to get inspired to work right now. Notwithstanding–or maybe precisely because of–my “familiar, not easy” theme from my last blog post, it seems like I can’t dredge up much enthusiasm for this. All these excerpts are familiar, I’m not excited to work on them, even if I don’t play them to absolute perfection. Obviously that’s a problem I am going to have to deal with.

I’ve also been thinking about–and to some extent, integrating into my practice–the Bulletproof Musician practice concepts. Often I am finding that they introduce more questions than they solve problems. Maybe I am overthinking things, of course. But I devil myself with questions like “if I’m doing mental practice, how long a passage should I be using?” And my practice pace seems to slow to a crawl.

In my next few sessions, I feel like I have to get back to a routine of hitting each excerpt once (at a minimum); perhaps I will then get a sense of forward progress and momentum.

The Elgin Symphony Orchestra has announced openings for two section double bass positions.

So here we go again 🙂

In spite what might sound like a cynical tone to those opening lines, I’m looking forward to this audition. I worked hard and made good progress in getting ready for the Grant Park audition and the Lyric Opera Orchestra before that. I feel–not exactly optimism or confidence, but resolve I guess, to do well this time around.

The last time I auditioned for Elgin was, well, a long time ago. Jason Heath and I made the final. I had returned just three days earlier from a several-weeks-long trip to France and hadn’t touched my instrument that entire time. Jason won the audition and has played in Elgin all this time. Since he has recently moved to San Francisco, one of these spots is his the one that should have been mine all along.

I downloaded the repertoire list a few days ago. It’s much shorter than those that I’ve been preparing. “Easy.” I said to myself and set it on my music stand, while I attended to finishing up some recording (hire me for your project on SoundBetter.com).

This morning I woke up and realized, hazily, that I had made a mistake. I have no right to call any of that audition material “easy.” I have never yet demonstrated mastery of that music. It is familiar, not easy.

So back to work. The audition is scheduled for September 6, 2016.

I’ll blog from time to time…posting frequency will increase with a) encouragement from readers and b) decreasing distance to the audition date. Leave a comment! Tell a friend to follow along or to subscribe to the blog!

Just got back to my apartment from the audition. “Did not advance.”

So, bummer. But I do not find myself maudlin, sentimental, weepy, morose, dejected, defeated. It’s a fact, it is what it is, it doesn’t negate the hard work I put in. I get the keep the improved abilities that I developed as a result of preparing for the audition and use them other places. So that’s just fine.

I spent a lot of time preparing, it’s true. I won’t get back those evenings or weekends. But that’s okay. I didn’t miss something huge like my child walking for the first time or something like that. (She’s quite past that stage!!) It’s not at all certain that I would have done something unquestionably better with my time. So the cost of time is fine with me.

For the record, the required pieces at the first round, in order:

• Bach ‘cello suite, one movement (I played the gigue from the first suite).
• Mozart Symphony #40, Fourth movement, mm. 115 to 138 (with pickup, natch!).
• Mozart Symphony #40, Fourth movement, 22 before A to A (you know the spot – the hard bit near the beginning.)
• Beethoven Symphony #5, Third movement opening to meas. 74. Yes, 74 – kind of abrupt ending point.
• Beethoven Symphony #5, Third movement, trio, no repeat, to that 8 measure rest after B. (This is as far as I got in the audition)
• Brahms, Symphony #2, Fourth movement, mm. 244 to 279.
• Mahler, Symphony #1, Third movement bass solo.
• Strauss, Ein Heldenleben, reh. 40 to reh 41.

*sigh*

On to other things. And cleaning my desk.

Tuesday, March 8

Tomorrow’s the day. Around 11:00 am central time.

Practicing tonight? I think I peaked on Sunday, darn it all. But went through everything once, with a little bit of “fix this fix that.” In the morning I’m going to get up about my usual time and just warm up and go through everything slowly and then fast and then hope for visualize the best.

As always, my best wishes to my colleagues who are also taking (or have taken — three days of auditions, Wednesday is the last of the preliminaries) this audition. But please don’t play better than me. 😉

Sunday, March 6

Haha, did I have you worried after yesterday’s post? Yeah, me too!

But today, although it got off to a slow start–I didn’t really start practicing until 3 pm, gulp!–turned out to be something of an epic day.

• Having recorded all the excerpts during yesterday’s practice session, I worked on specific bits that I noted when listening to that recording.
• Then I set up a mock audition for myself – chose about 10 excerpts, plus the Bottesini solo, took everything down to my unfinished basement and played through each, without going back, without stopping. The sound is different down there, and it’s cold, and the process of moving my music stand etc. resembled a bit what happens in the audition – you get all ready in one room, then you have to pack up all your stuff and move to the audition room. It really breaks your momentum.
• Back upstairs, I worked some more on particular spots. This time, wearing earplugs to once again change the sound.
• Finally, I played through everything again, in about 40 minutes. No stopping, no repeating anything. Recorded it, and will listen to that recording early tomorrow morning (and use my notes from that listening for Monday’s practice).

That all felt quite good. To cap off the day, I cleaned out a slow drain in our bathroom sink. That went like it was charmed.

So all in all, a successful day.

The audition is on Wednesday, March 9. I play during the 11:00 am hour (central time). Your good thoughts are always appreciated.

If you’re joining this string of blog posts mid-stream, you can jump to the first post in this series.