Posted by Rick Denney on July 10, 2003 at 14:03:20:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Keeping a good beat posted by Agree I think.. on July 10, 2003 at 12:55:04:
Yes, I think we basically agree. A point I made earlier is that we have all left musically dead groups that exist for the coffee break. If I want to be that bored, I'll go to the office, heh, heh.
In our group, the euphonium player often covers the bassoon part, because we usually don't have a bassoonist and it keeps our good euphoniumist busy. That's an example of what you are describing.
But we may part on your last point. The membership of an adult group is always a little bit variable, because people have family or employment obligations that take them out of the group for a concert cycle here and there. We occasionally invite professional musicians to sit in with us to fill in the resulting gaps, and we sometimes make it worth their while depending on their wishes. But in no case do we give the important solos or lead parts to those persons. Our conductor would rather force us to live up to our solo responsibilities than to have a flawless performance. Thus, at our last stage performance I just had to overcome my nervousness and play the little solos in Silverado, while the far-superior visiting Bob P. had to listen to my attempts. This provides a musical accountability mechanism, and also lets people know that if they spend months working at something they will get to live with their accomplishment, even though a pro might be able to do better at sight. It's not a matter of adults not wanting to acknowledge their weakness, it's a matter of them not wanting to make a commitment to something only to have their commitment rendered null and void because they couldn't quite master it all the way.
Rick "who has never played in a group that preferred coffee break to music, or who didn't want to talk about the performance afterwards unless it sucked" Denney