Tuesday 5 March 2002

I had an entertaining afternoon today in the first rehearsal for John Adams's Fearful Symmetries.  The correct keyboards are (wait for it) stranded on tour with Earth Wind and Fire in Turkey, so instead I had a rather good Korg sampling workstation to play with.  Of course none of the patches were set up for the Adams, so to misquote Eric Morecambe, I was playing everything in the right order, but not necessarily the right notes.  There was no time to reconfigure the patches or get to know them properly, so I improvised the whole thing using any notes that didn't sound completely wrong. Occasionally I reduced surrounding colleagues to giggles by unexpectedly playing a samba whistle or a vibraslap in the most inappropriate place.  Marin Alsop, who's conducting, was very apologetic - 'I had my annual tantrum about this'.  We're expecting the right equipment tomorrow.