Thursday 8 August 2002

Now in the air above Lake Erie on the way to Chicago. Tuesday was kind of memorable: a nice train journey to Washington DC, and then Chris picked me up at Union Station with his harmonium in the back of the station wagon, and off we went to the studio for a day of harmonium and melodica overdubs. After the discipline of playing Mahler arranged Schoenberg the previous night at the Lincoln Center, it was strangely liberating (if a bit scary) to be winging it all day, and have the results wind up on an album. 

Everyone there agreed that my green melodica is intrinsically very ugly (it was also suggested it looks as though I'm on a life support machine when I'm playing it) so by the end of the day it had been decorated with a few stickers to give it some character. I took it out of my luggage today to carry it onto the flight, in a tragic attempt to make me look more like a real member of the orchestra, and courtesy of Greg it now also has its own Connecticut name tag, inscribed 'Eric'. I'd suggested 'Nick' but that could be misinterpreted as an imperative.

I finished off the blurb for the Concerto Caledonia flyers at about 1am last night and faxed it to Marie.  

Conversation overheard by Ursula Leveaux in NY hotel elevator between two airline pilots: "What you gonna do tonight?" "Uh, dunno, I think I'll just crash."

[later] I've just come off stage at Ravinia, and the audience are listening to Schubert 3 being relayed over nice quality speakers into the darkened park, sitting on blankets and surrounded by bottles of wine and insect-repelling candles. The harmonium behaved itself tonight, I managed some subtle phrasing occasionally, but the last 4 bars (the quietest part of the whole piece) were completely wrecked by someone's mobile phone playing a very intricate and jolly tune - it sounded like a passing ice-cream van. Joseph's face was a picture of confusion and frustration. 

I've been moaning all week that we'd never actually rehearsed the piece properly, partly because Wolfgang Holzmair doesn't like singing on concert days until the gig. Today we actually spent 30 minutes on it, in which I managed to make a complete pig's ear of everything, playing wrong notes, too loudly, out of time, and generally being crap. At the end of the rehearsal, a member of the orchestra who shall remain nameless said to me (in all innocence) 'Have you never played one of these before?' I wandered off to sulk on a park bench for a while. Just before going on stage, I mentioned to Ursula that I'd completely screwed up the entire rehearsal, and she said 'That's what rehearsals are for.' Ah yes. Then I went on and did not a bad job if I say so myself.