Trial by Jury

[deborah_c]

Right...

By dint of an evening of photocopying, guillotining, several reels of magic tape and a certain amount of gentle cursing while trying to unstick the wrong photocopies from the places they've just glued themselves, I now have a part that I can actually play through, given a following wind. (This means I have finally done one of the six or so things I needed to do today. Sigh.) It does unavoidably become a five-page-wide monstrosity at one place, which might be a problem on an upright piano, but I can always nail it to the front of the piano when no one's looking, I suppose...

Talking of which, I almost certainly won't break any nails at the rehearsal tomorrow (which I've done at all the others I've been at), since most of the remaining longish ones have just broken off while practicing... And I think I've finally nailed the Bridesmaids' Entry, which has been troubling me, and the nice-but-slightly awkward number in D flat. A play all the way through without stopping yielded about three really obviously wrong notes (which I shall try to fix) and one rather dubious passage of about six bars (ditto); I have the next couple of weeks to learn how to play any of it musically. (On the other hand, the audience will be filkers... ;-p )

I also have two weeks to get over my near-terminal stage fright. Before playing in front of lots of people. Umm. While knowing... errm... almost none of them. At the front, being looked at. Eeeeeep. And I have nothing to wear :-( Please don't shoot me, I'm just the piano player...

Comments

[little-cinnamon.livejournal.com]

Are you there for the whole con? If so, chances are good that you'll know half the audience by the time Sunday rolls round:) And as you said, they're filkers, which also means that as long as you're wearing *something*, people are unlikely to comment or object:) Mostly they'll be chuffed that you've offered (been volunteered, blackmailed, dragged in by the hair, whatever) to accompany the nMC. Plus it was already sounding great at the last rehearsal!

I sympathise on the stage fright, by the way. I am reserving the majority of mine for the big Saturday set of Much Scariness, however. In any case, past experience shows that on the Sunday of a con I tend to be so sleep deprived that there is no room for stage fright:)

And yes, the Bridesmaid's entry sounds like it's a bit of a pig to play!

[medieval-bunny.livejournal.com]

You'll be ok, stagefright is bad I know, but keep your eyes on the music, and imagine the audience either in their underwear or (since that one never worked for me) with bunny ears. Make them ridiculous in your head so their gaze isn't superior. Best of luck!! *hugs*

[medieval-bunny.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that was meant to reply to Deborah...

[deborah_c]

Oh, don't worry, my eyes will be on the music, at least when not playing the bits for which I need to stare at my hands and play from memory... Unfortunately, I'll still know instinctively that everyone is staring at me. Not that I'm paranoid or anything, no, not me...

On the whole, I suspect it might be safer not to imagine the audience in their underwear, given the two options of (a) someone that might be attractive being rather distracting, or (b) people that aren't being, well... One accidental viewing of Celebrity Big Brother with John McCririck wearing almost nothing has already scarred me for life...

Bunny ears might work, though. Although given my propensity for bursting into fits of giggles and curling up in a heap on the floor, I'm not entirely sure how wise that would be either :-) I suspect the result would be the same as finding the entire choir wearing small zebras at this afternoon's rehearsal...

Still, having managed to play most of the music reasonably correctly this afternoon, I'm at least feeling a little more confident, although I still need to do quite a lot more practice before the performance. Just, um, not until I've eaten quite a lot more of the rather excellent banana/choc-chip birthday cake :-) :-)

Speaking of which, have just realised that one child doesn't like bananas, and another doesn't eat chocolate, and that it would be terribly unfair to serve it up to the remaining daughter when the other two can't eat it. So I shall, um, just have to eat it all up before they can see it tomorrow morning. Because, errm, their teeth are rather new; that's it, I knew there was a reason.

Hmm. Reading what I've just written, I believe it's possible that I've been temporarily distracted from my normal inveterate angsting into what someone recently described (rather charitably, compared with how most of my readers would probably describe it) as "whimsy". I must admit to rather enjoying today's rehearsal; I think I shall be rather sad when they go back to being an a capella choir... Roll on the con (slowly, after I've practiced, though!)

[aunty_marion]

"I think I shall be rather sad when they go back to being an a capella choir... "

We could always co-erce^h^h^h^h^hpersuade you to join us as a semi-regular accompanist, of course. And .... do you sing? [INSERT EVIL GRIN HERE]

[deborah_c]

*bounce bounce bounce bounce* ~squeak~

Ahem. Sorry, got a little overexcited there. Um. If you all felt that you'd like an accompanist more often, I would be delighted, assuming I'm not treading on callylevy's toes. Or anyone else's, for that matter...

I... well, theoretically I can sing. I used to do so a lot, once upon a time, occasionally even quite well. The problem is that I now have a very quiet voice, and it gets tired very easily, and I don't have much of a high range in an inconvenient sort of way. As you've probably noticed if you were in the half of the room that could hear me at all, it's not really much to write home about any more, which is a bit sad, but something that I hope I'll be able to work on given time. It may just take a long while, unfortunately :(

[callylevy.livejournal.com]

*grins* Actually, I'm very much enjoying hamming it up at the front!

Whatever you'd like to do with us, we want you to come and do that. Yeah!

Oh, I said I'd leave you details of theatre trip. So far, the group is looking like me, little_cinnamon, highstone, sibylle, pola_bear, possibly DJ. But I only advertised it on the list yesterday! Spiel below. *hugs and flees*

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'Life in the Theatre' starring Patrick Stewart and Joshua Jackson.
Apollo Theatre, Piccadily Circus
Thurs 17 Feb, 7.45pm

Summary: PS and JJ play a pair of actors - Robert and John - in this David Mamet play. Set in a fading small-town repertory theatre, this is a study of the rivalry and friendship between old and young in an uncertain profession..

We are likely to buy tickets in the stalls, which are £40 each.

Would you like to join us? If so, and you would like me to buy you a ticket in the stalls with us, let me know by Sunday 30th January, when I will buy them on my credit card. If you would like to go but want different tickets, all the info you need is at http://www.theatremonkey.com/APOLLObooking.htm. Let us know when you've booked and we'll perhaps arrange to meet up before the show for speedy eating!
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[deborah_c]

Eep!

I'm really sorry, but I've only just discovered this - yay for LJ losing comment notifications...

To be honest, I think the con is about to use up (probably more than) all of my spare money, particularly once I've added train fares and so on to the ticket costs, so I would have had to pass anyway, but thank you for the thought!

[bardling.livejournal.com]

Having been a member of the NMC for awhile I can assure you that the choir has in the past done other pieces with accompaniment...