tubas really blow

12-11-99

TubaChristmas today. Not as big as the ones we had in East Lansing: those pushed 100 players every year; this one had a couple dozen. Still fun, though. And we were on the Channel 13 News, looking geeky.

I met the other guys in John's section at work. One of them introduced me to the director of a community band in Macon. The director got sort of silly about me showing up for the rehearsals. I'm afraid I might be stuck, and I can't decide whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, I will have a set rehearsal time every week, I'll be playing in an ensemble again, tuning my horn on a regular basis. On that pesky other hand, I might be the only one in the band who tunes. Community bands are not known for their musical prowess.

Don't get me wrong. Community bands are an important part of the musical culture in the US, comparable to the brass bands in Europe. Everyone who studies music in school has the opportunity to play for the rest of their lives, as a hobby. A hobby. Imagine how frustrating it is, then, for someone with years of professional musical experience to depend on a community band for their sole ensemble performance outlet.

I've done guest shots with community bands for the past few years. Stand-in gigs, mostly, involving small compensations, usually trips to some conference or another. I played regularly in a band in Michigan; they paid me well and I still bitched about the standards of intonation and musical etc. The Macon gig would be unpaid, and I'd probably have to defer, based on seniority, to an older gentleman who calls his euphonium a baritone and lies out on the high notes.

Not only would I defer, but I'd have to take his "advice" on how I should be playing, listen to stories of his meeting Leonard Falcone, and I'll bet money that I'd be sneered about for being a woman who thinks she can play a Man's Instrument. (huh huh—play a man's instrument.) And if I attempted to show them who really can play a Man's Instrument, I'd be ostracized for showing up the established, popular euphonium players in the band.

Believe me. I told you, I've done the community band thing before. Once, John and I stood in when a member of a band had a stroke. The band was going to a national conference in Detroit, so the conductor, who'd been my junior high band director, asked us to help out. The band hated us. They hated us for replacing their friend. They hated us for being better than their friend. They hated us for being temporary, just to make them sound good at the conference. What a miserable fifty bucks that was.

Will I do it? Probably. They have a concert next week, so I'll listen before I make the final decision. But it's too late, really, for me to go back. The director is an influential member of the music ed scene in Macon, and I'll bet he could (if he wanted to) keep me from teaching in town. And I need the extra incentive to keep my playing skills high. Today's Christmas carol marathon was enough to let me know how far my playing endurance has slipped. Cut me some slack, eh, it's the first time I've performed in a group since last summer.