Walk for Hunger Retrospective

This is usually my big performance of the year. I gave the details in my Cantabile Band post yesterday. For this one, I thought I'd dredge up some pictures from previous Walks.

I'm certainly not going to have time to post tomorrow morning. I may post to the spindle later today, or I may wait until I get home with a picture and post that.

2008

This was last year. The real performance was when we played for Bonnie in her hospital room. This one was dampened by both rain and Bonnie dying; one performer had done dropin rehearsals, and another performer had another event to go to and dropped in for the first set but had left before this set. The rain actually stopped by noon, but I don't think most of us remember it that way. We did a lot of trios, some of which we're repeating this year; I hope it's more cheerful to sing about walking over hills an dales and birds singing.

2007

The year before may have been a high point of some sort. We did a performance of a lot of the same repertoire at the Boston Recorder Society Play the Recorder Day, and really knew things pretty well. People had learned some things about how to secure music and stands from the wind the previous year.

2006

2006 was the year we played at the Jeremiah Ingalls festival in Vermont, so we put a bunch of shape note stuff on the program. I think it was an entertaining program if you liked both listening to music and watching musicians run up and down the riverbank chasing their music.

2005

2005 was another year it rained, although, again, it really cleared up pretty well by the time we were playing. But the viol player didn't want to get her instrument out, and a less experienced performer freaked out when I suggested switching some parts so that I could play bass on the serpent. It wasn't even her part I wanted to switch -- it was the person she was standing next to. So now there's language in the FAQ about how in a dropin group you have to be prepared to be either one-on-a-part or not one-on-a-part.

2004

2004 was the year of the best professional coperformers. It was really hot and two very good recorder players came and played duets and lots of people stopped to listen to them.

2003

This was a big band performance. I think I made everybody come to at least one rehearsal, but not necessarily enough rehearsals for them to have learned the music. And it was a big enough crowd that it was hard to hear. I think it wasthe year we started having other groups to help us out, but I got several groups, only some of whom showed up when and where they were supposed to.

2002

This was a big band where not everybody came to a rehearsal, and nobody could hear anything from the other end of the group. It might have been the first year we had the whole day to cover, and I pretended we could do it with solos, and people had the idea they should be able to walk to the bathroom (a mile or so away) between sets. I opened my big mouth at dinner afterwards about how to run a recorder society, and that's how I got stuck doing it for a while.

Previous

2001 was the year I founded the Cantabile Renaissance Band. For two or three years previous to that, I had a fairly good recorder trio, and we just bought some of the books of recorder arrangements we knew pretty well and played. I think we were only covering two hours, and we met regularly anyway without random people dropping in. The biggest problem I remember was that if the wind came up and you were facing the wrong direction, the sound didn't come out of the tenor recorder. A recorder group that meets regularly really makes more sense in this context than the crazy stuff we do now, but I don't have one of those, and I don't know many people who do.

Related posts:

1. Schedule for the Walk for Hunger
2. Walk for Hunger, 2009
3. Walk for Hunger is this Sunday (May 6)