Avenue Q gig

So I've been booked to play in the pit for Avenue Q this week so I'm pretty excited ! I'm taking my train tomorrow morning and I'll be arriving in Derby (where the show is played) at 4. I'll be meeting a friend on the way (in London).

The band's been rehearsing since yesterday and I'll be only arriving tomorrow so I'll have missed 2 rehearsals... I'm a bit embarrassed but I couldn't do otherwise.
To make up for the lack of rehearsal there I've practicing a lot on the music here at home. I know it's not the same but still I hope I'll be up to par for opening night.

I've also carefully selected exceptional reeds for the occasion. I've picked 2 clarinet reeds and 1 saxophone reed. For 5 shows I think it will be enough. I consume clarinet reeds faster than saxophone reeds so that's why I picked 2 of the first.
In case that's not enough I brought new reeds boxes. I'm sure I'll have time to find a couple of good ones in the lot in case the ones I got get crappy too early.
I usually buy traditional Vandoren clarinet reeds (strength 3) but they didn't have any in store so I decided to try some new stuff : "Benz Reeds Supreme Comfort" (strength 3.5). It is said to contain much more good reeds than Vandoren boxes (and quite frankly, it's not that hard considering how inconsistent Vandoren reeds are). The only problem is that the reeds aren't in a separate plastic thingy for each reed but just in some piece of cardboard. So I quickly put them to safety after opening the box.

I've also picked green java sax reeds instead of the red java, don't know if that will change much but you've got to try new stuff everyday !

Anyway, my horns (flute, clarinet, alto sax) are ready. I'm really tired today don't know why, and we'll see what tomorrow has in store for me !

Concerning Music

So I decided to take the music matter at hand.

I recently realized that I wasn't improving all that much lately on clarinet and on saxophone.

Still being somewhat a beginner (though it's ok by now) at the flute the learning curve is still rather steep but I fear I might let go somehow just like I did for clarinet and saxophone.

See, I was only playing stuff I knew and I was playing it the same way over and over. That's not the way your learn, is it ? That would be too easy.

My aim would be that next year, I could pass and audition for a cruise line agency on woodwinds. That would be quite the life, visiting the world doing what I love and still have so much free time I could catch up on all those readings I always said I would do or work out to become the gym king (well, maybe my expectations are high). I've read blog posts from musicianwages that hinted that it wasn't the dream life you'd hope for, but what the hell it's now or never.

So my hopes are to pass an audition in one of the many agencies. As an orchestra musicians. From what I hear it would be mean playing in a band formed out of others such orchestra musicians to accompany guest entertainers or to play along shows or, or, ... what do I know. The music played is not amazing but it's still music. I'd audition obviously as Saxophone/Woodwinds. So that means Sax, Flute, Clarinet. At least I hope so because no bassoon or oboe for me (well... yet :D). The audition is mainly saxophone. With sight-reading (I'm a beast at sight-reading I've been sight-reading my whole life picking up a stack of scores and just reading them) as the main part of it. For that I'm all set. I hope so at least. I actually don't know if sight-reading includes all 3 instruments or just the sax but I don't care much as sight-reading is sight-reading. Just a bit scared about the flute though, and I still have to work on intonation in the altissimo register (above high D) in the sax and clean up my clarinet articulation. And some other stuff but I coming to this.

So there's sight-reading but I've also seen in some agencies that they were asking for an etude on each instrument. I don't know what kind of etude they are expecting but I picked the Klose books for both sax and clarinet and Gariboldi etudes for flute (maybe those flute etudes are too low for their expectation but I'll talk about that with my flute teacher). I'll start them over from the beginning, practice all of those and pick those I'm most comfortable with (or at least those with which I'd make the best impression).

Then, last but not least, there's the jazz/improv part. Again, this part doesn't show up for all auditions but it still has to be worked on. So you have to pick a standard (from a real book), some med. swing or something like that, and play and improvise on it. I'm not new to the jazz improvisation but I'm no pro either. So there's still work to be done on that.

So the auditions for the different agencies are a mix of those 3 parts, almost all of them include the sight-reading part, most of them have the jazz/improv part, and only some have the etudes parts. But I have to be ready for those 3 things.

That's what I'll be working on for the next year and what this blog will keep track of.

Time to practice, another post coming up explaining how I'll put that in practice.