Chaos

I never knew rehearsals could be such chaos. Everybody talking at once, and the conductor changing her mind several times about everything. Then the last-minute rehearsal, right before the concert, was even more crazy. Most of the singers were forty minutes late, the conductor was angry, and the pitch was about the worst it could get. I couldn’t figure out what key we were in—well, actually, it wasn’t a key at all. So I tried to fit my note with the tenor, who I thought was probably pretty close to being right, but that didn’t work either. I thought, if this happens during the concert, I will cry.

And then I lost my music, and had to read off someone else’s, which just barely succeeded because it was the wrong distance for my bifocals.

Because we never got around to working out just where we should stand, we ended up way too spread out, and we couldn’t hear each other well. Or maybe that was just as well.

But somehow, by some sort of miracle, we carried it off, though I suspect it wasn’t very accurate. The last piece, a lively and complicated one, was well received. And the rest of the concert, for the most part, was very good—the Jerusalem Street Orchestra, some Klezmer music, Tomas Tulacek and others.

There were tables full of snacks to be eaten at intermission, but most of it was gone before we even started.

And now it’s 1:30 a.m. and I’m still wound up. I’m in the mood for some chocolate cake or something. Maybe I’ll settle for cinnamon toast.

Concert

A concert is today. I'm in a small choir, singing first alto. The rehearsals have been so chaotic, it's hard to know how well it will turn out. We don't have enough really dedicated singers. It's all volunteers.

After the choir is a lot of other music, including a solo violinist from Slovenia. It should be good. I just hope my energy holds out.

February 2018

It rained today. Flood warnings. I guess there are places in Israel where an inch of rain can cause major flooding. But I've never seen a flood here.

I'm about burnt out with sitting at the computer. But over the last several months, and especially the last three weeks, I got all my music notes in order. About 1500 pages' worth. Each page has a few scribbles on it, sometimes the first line of a tune, sometimes the whole thing. But most of them are worthless, and some unreadable. Eventually I narrowed it down to about 300 that are worth looking at again, and most of those I have put on MuseScore. Of those, about 80 are looking promising. Occasionally we try singing one, and the moment we do, I find errors. In spite of all my careful proof-reading, there are still errors. A "ka" instead of a "ke" in the transliteration. A "ba" instead of a "va." Too many beats in the last measure. Wrong chords. Sometimes wrong words. Wrong verse numbers. Wrong formattting. Formatting is what takes the most time. And it's addicting.

I haven't yet found the perfect font. Some fonts are good in the lower case letters, but the capital letters and numbers look funny. I finally decided on Cambria for my English lyrics, only to find that the "f" always looks funny. Before that I used Free Serif, which looks nice, but on MuseScore it has some difficulties.

Something has happened to my taste buds. I now drink my de-caf double strength. Sometimes I even add milk and sugar. My eggs now taste best with garlic and black pepper. But I still eat the same old bread, something like Borozinski. It makes great toast. And it's habit-forming.

Apartment life is a drag. But we have a nice apartment for getting work done in. Annoying, though, is the variety of weird smells. This morning I smelled a very strong chlorine smell in the bedroom. Car exhaust, cigarette smoke, sewer smells and cooking make their way into my apartment. The cooking smells can be really good--sometimes brownies, garlic chicken, almost-burnt toast, and barbecue. But freezer-burn chicken is not so nice.