Bringing Live Music back into the Living Room

They reorganized all the loud wind classes on Monday night, and threw me (and a number of other people) out of them.

I shouldn't have been surprised -- I know someone who flew from Massachusetts to San Francisco to take a cornetto class and they cancelled it without telling her because not enough people signed up.

This seems to have been the reverse -- they had an unusual number of brass players sign up, so they hired an extra coach, but his mother-in-law was dying in Toronto, so he didn't come. So instead of making the other brass coaches coach more students, or finding someone to fill in at the last moment, they just threw some people out of the classes.

In my case they put me in two recorder classes. One of them was billed as a Camarata class, so I'm going and playing serpent and cornetto there, because I assume the people who signed up for that knew they'd be playing with mixed instruments. It's not the best class for me, both because I would learn more about brass playing from a class with other brass players, coached by a brass player, and also because the coach is my recorder teacher, and it's silly to come to a place full of world-class musicians and work with someone who lives a mile away from you and gives you a recorder lesson every week.

The other was billed as a recorder class, and when they posted the new class assignments, the wrote "Laura Conrad (rec)" with the rec in red lettering. So I decided I could get more out of taking third period off and catching up on this blog, and napping and practicing. I made a point of telling the teacher (also from the Boston area) that it was nothing personal and I was sure it was a fine recorder class, except that I didn't come here for recorder classes. He was quite sympathetic, and said the students in the class had been quite excited about having a serpent, and we agreed I could come try it if I wanted it to, but I've decided not to.

I've usually just put up with decisions I didn't like, and complained about them to the other students, but this time I decided to be a squeaky wheel and see if I got any grease.

The person who used to be in charge of class assignments was sitting at the table when I was explaining my problem to the current class assignment person, and she told me she thought I'd given a very good, clear explanation of the problem, but that it might make sense to also give that kind of explanation directly to the brass faculty, and eliminate the middleperson. So at afternoon coffee break I found the cornetto teacher and explained the problem. He was sympathetic, but not really helpful, but he did agree that he should be putting some ensemble playing into the morning cornetto class. I asked him if he thought it made sense to talk to Wim Becu, and he didn't say no, but he didn't say anything that convinces me the answer is, "Yes", either. But maybe some time Wim won't be surrounded by 10 trombone players and I can ask him if he knows of a workshop where someone like me could get brass ensemble experience.

If this had happened on Monday, I would have been frustrated and disappointed, but not the kind of upset I was with it happening after the Monday classes. A number of people tried really hard to make me feel better. The most successful one was a student who had been in both Monday afternoon classes. He said he thought both classes with me on Monday afternoon had been really good, and the class with Wim is still pretty good, but the class with Steve is much worse without me, and with the new people they moved into it.

Good things are still happening. The Tuesday night lecture was a humorous survey of the history of French music, with illustrations. The viol coach who's coaching the loud winds in the "Mass" (long story that I don't know all of yet, but I may tell you later) was at a loss for what to do for a loud band piece, so I suggested the Estocart Psalm CXXXVII that's on SerpentPublications.org and he printed it out and printed several other things, so we'll probably play some of that.