A Continual Feast

Well, orchestra/choir tour is over, Libby Moothart is now Mrs. Jonathan Rowley, and I have loads of homework and practicing to do.

Because of tour, I wasn't able to attend Libby's wedding. I was very sad about this. This morning I immediately checked several blogs of Biola folk who might have put up pictures or at least a post about the wedding, but all to no avail - I've found nothing at all! I'm very anxious to know how everything went.

I had thought that I would spend every moment of Saturday thinking about the wedding taking place in Southern California, but it's strange how the tyranny of the urgent wins out. Even though a wedding is more important than a solo performance with orchestra, my entire weekend was pretty crazy, and most of my time was spent traveling, trying to catch a few more minutes of sleep on a bus, practicing, warming up, rehearsing, performing, traveling again, and so on. It was very exhausting. This morning Roommate and I both feel as though we're getting sick. Tour does that to you. It just wears you out. It was definitely tiring for me to perform The Lark Ascending three nights in a row. I didn't really get enough sleep all weekend, either.

Anyway, the performances went okay. The first one was pretty clean (although not perfect), and I felt okay about it.

The second night, I had a memory slip. It might be the most panicked I've ever felt in my life. At least when I play with a pianist (a.k.a. FavoriteBoy) accompanying me, I know he can skip to find me wherever I find my place again. But with an orchestra, I obviously can't really expect that. In my mind, that moment of memory lapse seems like the entire performance. That really is most of what I remember. Later friends told me that it was only a few seconds. I played a few notes, went back again, still couldn't remember, my teacher (who was conducting) whispered, "G!" to me, I started a third time, and then was able to keep going from there. Within a few measures, I was fine again. As soon as I finished the piece (and the Bartok Dances that followed), I went offstage and fell apart and started crying. A bunch of kind choir people said they didn't even know what was wrong; they hadn't realized I had screwed up. FavoriteBoy said the memory slip didn't matter since I pulled myself back together and went on and the rest of the performance was okay. Kate and Melissa talked to me for a while, and suddenly the choir was going on stage to perform their half of the program and I was still crying, so I didn't sing that night. My teacher came to find me and gave me a hug and said it happens to everyone, and anyone who claims they've never had something like that happen is lying. He said now I know I can pull it back together after something like that, and that should give me an added measure of confidence. My teacher's wife said "I don't care what you say about yourself, I'm proud of you!", and my chamber music coach came up to me later and told me that he could tell by my face that I wasn't happy with the performance, but he wanted me to know that whatever may have gone wrong, he didn't know about it; he was very nice. Anyway, that was nice. It's weird how in my mind, the memory slip eclipses everything else, but other people didn't even necessarily know about it. Anyway, everyone was really nice.

The third night, last night, went pretty well I guess. My teacher was really happy with it and called it "fantastic." He said I expressed myself - seeing as this is the main goal, I'm pretty happy with that. I had some out of tune notes, but no memory slips, and I feel okay about the whole thing. I'm glad it's all over. FavoriteBoy recorded two of the performances, and I think I might want to listen to them.

Thus endeth tour, and I am tired.