Big Fat Summer Band, Emphasis on Fat

The Big Fat Summer Band is back, and boy is it ever big—105 members this year, which makes it the largest edition of this band in its 95-year history. The park where we play most of our concerts has a medium-sized stage, so we aren’t sure if we’ll fit for our Monday performance without spilling out over the edges.

And boy, is it ever summer—the temperature hovered around 90˚ during our first concert of the season last night, and it's going to be even hotter for the second one tomorrow night.

We broke in this big band at a street festival, and the seating wasn't too cramped because we were able to spread out over the east and west lanes and the turning lane in between. You know, when you play on the street, your sound goes straight up into thin air, and you can’t hear what you’re playing. It’s an odd sensation, like you’re playing into a silent mute, and you can only guess if you’re on pitch or not. And it wasn’t just me who had that problem—even our principles played silent notes and looked concerned.

We played big, noisy numbers like excerpts from Carmina Burana, loud marches, Dixieland stuff and songs that seemed to call for the loudest bass trombone you've ever heard—it's been referred to as a giant elephant fart, so that gives you an idea of the quality of its sound. And more than once, people turned around to give the stink eye to the tuba section that seemed to believe their background notes were more worthy of solo volume than of subtle accents.

So, yep. The Big Fat Summer Band is back. And boy, is it ever fat. Or maybe I should strictly speak for myself. A friend who was seated in the audience during the street performance posted a few photos on Facebook afterward, and when I caught sight of myself from a side view, I could only sigh. I have been eating low carb for over a month now, and yet there sits a behemoth in the second chair of the horn section. She’s someone I don’t recognize in the mirror, and she’s a complete stranger in photos, especially side views taken while she is unaware. Who the ham sandwich is that? I ask myself.

Well, all I can do is keep at it, continue cutting out white food like potatoes, sugar, rice, bread and pasta; and continue opting for water over wine. This way of eating has worked for me before, although it took months to reach my goal the first time around, so I have no reason to think it won’t work again. I just have to remember a physical transformation doesn’t happen in just a matter of weeks. And I have to remember to ask the friend with the nosy camera to angle away from the horn section when next she wants to feature the band.

I mean, we’re big and all, and we revel in our size, but it’s not the girth of each individual that makes us proud. And come Monday evening when we spill out over the edges of the park stage, our space problem is expected to be caused by having too many seats in each row, not by the size of the individuals in those seats.

Here's to another year of the Big Fat Summer Band, and to being fat in numbers only. We'll play our hearts out throughout the season, and I'll keep eating as I believe I should all summer long. And maybe come fall, when we pack up, I'll have played well, and I'll be sighing less often at the sight of unwanted photos.

Getting From Point A to Point B

Early this morning, No. 1 (whose real name is Katie) and I walked out of our hotel and said “good bye” right there on the sidewalk. Her car was parked in the garage across the street, and my BART entrance was just to the right. Katie had given me her last BART ticket with enough money on it to get me to SFO.

I only had to wait about ten minutes before the train arrived, and because this was rush hour on a work day, I squeezed into the car and settled in for the one-hour ride. “Settled” isn’t quite the right word for it, though, as I was standing shoulder to shoulder with humanity, coffee cup in one hand and passenger strap in the other.

A mother had somehow managed to set up a makeshift work station in order to put ponytails in her little girl’s hair; and a young man said to all of us, “May I have your attention, please? Heaven and Hell are very real,” And he proceeded to explain why he believes this to be true and what affect this has, or should have, on our lives. These were my traveling conditions.

I have learned how to get myself from downtown Berkeley to the airport, how to buy a ticket if my daughter hasn’t given me one, where to change trains—on the Freemont line, it’s at MacArthur—and how to get from the last stop to my gate. I have learned to do this comfortably, in fact, without fear of being lost or fear of being accosted in any form. And I take a certain amount of pride in this small accomplishment. To most people, being proud of learning a train route may seem ridiculous, like saying at nearly the age of 50, “I am proud I know how to tie my shoes.” But given my history, I’ll take any demonstration of my ability to function in society as an accomplishment.

I grew up in a house with parents who took care of me into my twenties. Then, I married young to a man who, although he isn’t overbearing, does the driving, if you know what I mean. And when you’re a passenger long enough, staring out the window at the passing scenery, it’s easy to forget you have the ability to take the wheel. It’s easy to relinquish even the smallest tasks so that all you have to do is thoughtlessly get in line or take your seat.

Katie and I talked about so many things during our few days together in Berkeley. One of our subjects was whether or not I regretted not having a college degree. That used to eat at me until most of my dreams, or nightmares, involved my trying to get back into school. But I eventually realized I am a highly capable person without a degree, and that I can accomplish most things I put my mind to regardless of my level of education. Katie said she thinks that’s true of me, and I was relieved to know she sees her mother as a capable person, despite my being in the passenger seat so often during her childhood.

Husband used to tell me that his marrying me was a rescue operation, and that if he hadn’t stepped in, I would have either been left to live with my parents or become a bag lady living under a bridge along Lake Shore Drive—we were Chicago children. He was kidding, I’m pretty sure, but his joke put the thought into the head of an already insecure and untested girl, and I have spent years breaking the paralyzing bands of my insecurities and testing the limits of my abilities.

So, now do you see why even being able to get from point A to point B can make me proud? It’s a simple test. It’s further proof. It’s a sign I can take the wheel when called upon, and I can successfully steer clear of pot holes and road blocks and even a life spent under a bridge.

At Home in the Unfamiliar

Today was our last real day in the condo because tomorrow the moving company arrives, bright and early. After they pack up, with me following behind them with a broom and a dustpan, which they'll toss into the truck before shutting the door, No. 1 and I will be left in the empty rooms with only last-minute things to tend do. Then we'll spend a night in a hotel and evacuate on Wednesday. I'll head for the airport, and the girl will head for a 12-day road trip that will eventually land her in Ohio. We'll be headed home, at least I will be, but for a few moments tomorrow, I believe we're going to feel a little homeless.

On this last day, No. 1 has been excusing herself now and then to spend time with friends for the last time while I stayed behind and taped up boxes and drifted aimlessly in the hammock chair. That hour or so when I sat outside with the birds and the noises of the city was actually very pleasant, but I didn't enjoy the prospect of spending the evening alone here with no work left to do. So, when No. 1 said she was going to run out for about an hour with her friend Michelle, and she described the neighborhood in Oakland where they would be paying a quick visit with some friends, I asked if I could tag along. I didn't want to go meet the friends and barge in on their last night together, but I did want to go find a spot in this so-called interesting neighborhood for a change of scenery.

Standing on the corner where I could head west toward the cafe the girls had recommended or cross the street toward the Mexican restaurant, I crossed the street. Oddly, the joint had a blue-grass band, No. 1 said, and with what I detected as a slight smirk, she added that I'd probably like the place, unusual as the combination of fish tacos and blue grass might be. The girl knows her mother.

I ordered the fish tacos, which are a favorite of mine, and found a little table—note in the fuzzy photo above that all the tables are little, and note as well that what you see here are the only tables in the space. And just as I was told, the small band by the back door was a full-fledged and authentic blue grass group. The banjo and bass and mandolin and guitar were exactly what I had known as a kid, as we listened to recordings of groups or watched them on television, and my father would talk about how he and his brothers would play those old tunes every evening in the 30s when families did such things as a matter of course.

The group sang classics, like "Ain't nobody gonna miss when I'm gone. Oh, won't you write these words upon my tombstone." "Want to see my honey, want to see her bad. She's the best gal this poor boy ever had." "In the pale moonlight, we quarreled one night, our hearts were young and free." And between the lyrics, they took turns with solos that were as quick as any I've heard, with just the right combination of joy and sorrow.

The music these people made, seeming so out of place in a Mexican restaurant in Oakland, California, was familiar to me in the unfamiliar. I was alone in a place I had never been before and would likely never be again, yet I knew some of the lyrics because I had heard these tunes before, and I could tap my foot to a style of music that I've known since my earliest years. I've never been good at harmonizing on the fly, but listening to these people meet each other in the middle with perfect harmony reminded me of how my sisters could find their parts so easily when we would sing around the piano. I swear, the base player even looked a little like my sister Myra. And I saw a bit of my Aunt Sybil in the woman with the guitar.

People offer up so many quaint phrases about music—how it allows us to express emotions or ideas we have no words for or how it's universal or how it makes life palatable. Those things are all true, but here's another thing that's true about music—when you are in an unfamiliar setting, and you hear chords and tunes and lyrics that are familiar to you, you are suddenly in known territory. You belong. You find comfort. You breath easy because you are at home even when so far away from where you actually lay your head.

I have been to several unfamiliar places on this visit to Berkeley. Tonight, I went to one more; but as long as that funky blue grass band was playing, I was right at home in the unfamiliar.

It's Been a Good Day

This has been one productive day for No. 1 and I. We have packed, cleaned and organized, and now most of her space looks like this:

This morning, faced with a day of work, we decided to ease into the task by not doing it. Instead, we drove up steep, narrow roads to Tilden Park, a vast reserve with great views of the bay like this one—we sat on huge fallen logs, spilled our coffee and watched little lizards dart back and forth, and we took pictures:

Then we meandered back down into town and to a park within walking distance of our house to explore the Himalayan Festival. I don't know the name of this park, but it's in the middle of a residential area and it's nothing but tall trees and bridges and a winding creek so that you forget you're Berkeley and think instead that you're in a woodsman's retreat. The festival stalls were placed in around these trees and bridges, and you wind your way around paths to find tables of jewelry and bags and shawls. There were Tibetan drums and cymbals playing, and clothes from Nepal for sale, and incense from all over that made the air smell a bit intoxicating. I found myself leaning in to stalls with wafting trails of smoke and breathing deeply.

Most of the place looked like this:

We settled for lunch at an Indian stand, and I ordered a kind of fried chicken wrap with mint pesto and salad, and we found a curb to sit and enjoy a wonderful lunch—in wonderland. This is what mine looked like:

Back home, we tackled our to-do lists and talked and giggled, and we've made good progress. It's been a good day.

Queen of Hearts Revisited

This tired old blog used to be quite musical. I would entertain you all with piano tunes, recorder melodies and the occasional vocal piece as a song from my younger years came to mind. You seemed to like it, or at least the long-lost residents of Blogville did, so I kept it up and accumulated my little recordings at My Humble Recital (see sidebar).

Well, I have recently learned that the website that hosted many of those recordings with free storage and blog-suitable recording graphics is shutting down, and I will either have to import my mp3 files into a different site or let them go the way of all that fades to dust. In the case of some of the older recordings, they are gone all together never to be seen nor heard from again.

For the sake of posterity, I have re-recorded one of my favorites, an old English tune I learned while in high school. I would visit my sister Melanie, who lives in Chicago and she would grant me weekend reprieves from our unsettling mother and then send me back refreshed and able to handle another week at the ranch. Mel had a Joan Baez album of old English songs that I fell in love with, and this was one of those songs.

For the next few days, I'll be in Berkeley helping No.1 pack up and move out of her apartment to begin the next phase of life—grad school in Austin, Texas. We won't be working non-stop, though, and have plans to go to the ocean and to eat out often. In fact, we plan to pack up the kitchen first thing so we'll have no choice, smart women that we are. While I'm away, listen to my quiet mumbling song and grant me grace in the critiquing. Speaking of No. 1, I believe I used to sing this song to her when she was a little girl—it made for a lovely night-time drifting-off sound.

 

Money is Funny, I Think

I just earned actual cash from a graphic design project, and it got me thinking about money.

There are days when I think we'd all be better off if we didn't exchange money, if we exchanged goods and services instead. Bartering is the way to go, I think, sometimes.

I was out of the design business for a year or so, and my recent re-entry has been on a strictly volunteer basis with the exception of a job I completed just today. I'm OK with that because of the nature of the projects—a community orchestra and public school music groups. I've done some signs and business cards for a profitable music store, but I earned valve oil and a discount on an alto recorder for those jobs.

When I branched out from Husband's business and started finding work of my own accord, I earned cash designing business cards (here are some examples, although most of these were pro-bono, come to think of it), and I designed some T-shirts and a plane logo back in the day (you can see them here, although again, some of them were pro-bono as well). I've done brochures and flyers and letterheads for cash, and I've done book covers for African trade beads, which are almost as good as cash when you think about it.  Mostly, my work is for free or for the cost of lunch or a cup of coffee or a bouquet of flowers or a box of candy or even just the satisfaction of a job well done for a well-deserving cause.

But work for cash? It's been a while. Spending a few hours designing a brochure for a new bed and breakfast has actually earned me money I can spend. I might spend it on lunch or a cup of coffee or a bouquet of flowers or a box of candy, and this leads to my puzzle. In our culture, we find a certain affirmation in the money we receive for the work we do, and that's not such a bad system. Cash certainly comes in handy when the bills are due.

But picture someone like me spending money I have earned on things like lunch or coffee or treats—I could very likely be enjoying those things alone. Now picture someone like me "spending" my bartering payments—the lunch and the coffee and the treats—I'm more likely to be enjoying those things with another person, an actual flesh-and-blood human being sharing a table with me, and conversation and smiles and furrowed brows and tears and worries and joys.

When the check I have earned arrives, I'll be pleased and will take it to the bank. That moment will provide a certain level of satisfaction, but it won't begin to compare with the longer lasting satisfaction that comes with sharing a project with someone who pays you with their costly time, their precious thoughtfulness and their treasured personal stories.

Yep, money is funny. It's also a little cheap, I think

It's About Making the Effort

I often write about my orchestra, and I refer to it as mine because I am a performing member, so I can claim a certain level of ownership. This isn’t someone else’s orchestra, a philharmonic that serves someone else’s community. It’s mine, and it serves the community where I live.

Last fall, the board of directors saw fit to invite me to join them because it would be good to have a performing member at the table, so now I claim double ownership. Not only do I get the privilege of sitting in my seat on stage and making music with talented musicians, which is benefit enough, but I now get to be officially involved in the planning of things, the promotion of things and the nitty gritty of things.

Good thing, too, because months before I joined the board, the conductor and I began having private meetings with people around town—newspaper editors and people from other arts organizations, for example—looking for new ways to promote our non-profit group that relies on benevolent financial support and the sale of tickets for its bread and butter.

The arts are slipping across the board. Government funding on all levels has dried up, and everyone, even the giants, is feeling the squeeze. It’s not that people don’t listen to classical music anymore or that our particular orchestra isn’t worth hearing. It’s that modern Americans have lost interest in sitting still in a concert hall for a couple of hours and listening to a live performance. Such activity requires having to dress in something other than schlubby clothes, sitting still without fiddling and fidgeting with a cell phone and keeping your mouth closed, both to talking and eating. Such activity requires effort. And frankly we’ve become lazy.

I, for one, think we could all use some sitting still. We could benefit from less fidgeting, less talking, less lounging around in sweats with our feet on the coffee table. What we could do with is some activities that require effort. People often say to me, when I invite them over for dinner, “You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.” And my response is always this—I absolutely should have gone to so much trouble because the people I invite into my home are worth the trouble and deserving of the best I can offer.

The same is true when listening to great music—it’s worth the trouble, the best we can offer, to put ourselves in the frame of mind to hear it, not as background noise to our other activity, but as the central focus. And in no other setting can we pull that off than when we seat ourselves squarely in front of a group that is offering the music to us, just for us, going to a lot of trouble to give us their finest.

Well, stepping off of my soapbox, my orchestra’s board is trying some new things to convince more people we are worth the effort. For example, we’ve created some wrap-around events that coordinate with the concerts to encourage people to see our concerts as social gatherings—we’ve given a children’s party before a Halloween concert, provided cookies and punch for people to enjoy while greeting a guest performer, created a coffee house for teenagers to meet a young musician, and hosted a barbeque before a country concert.

We put our children’s chorus in the Christmas parade, riding a float and singing along the route. We’ve stepped up our presence in the local newspaper, and the conductor has recorded some special spots at the radio station. Last weekend, we gave commemorative T-shirts to the 130 high school students who performed with us; this week we’ll be distributing special table tents to a bunch of local restaurants to draw in country music fans; and we’re in the middle of the May Festival that promotes fine arts events all over the county this month alone.

We instituted a newsletter that is emailed to more than 1,100 fans, introduced pre-concert chat videos that are online and are aired in the hall lobby before each concert, given comp tickets to tons of people to help break the ice, and networked with other local arts organizations to make plans for the future.

Will all of our efforts pay off? It’s too soon to tell. But we made the effort and learned from our successes and failures. In today’s financial circumstance, compounded by a dwindling attention span and amplified laziness, survival is about All Hands on Deck, All Ideas on the Table, Try New Things. See What Works and What Doesn’t. It’s mostly about making the effort.

Music to Part Your Hair

(borrowed from a Facebook friend)

Last night, my community orchestra performed one heck of a concert to a nearly full and very appreciative house, and I’m telling you, the sound we produced could part hair. Literally. I have been seated in front of timpani on occasion, or a very enthusiastic bass drum, and I could actually feel my hair move with each beat. It’s an odd, ghostly sensation, and I’m imagining that’s how the entire audience felt as we blasted them with our finest and most bombastic notage.

The orchestra is in the midst of a May Festival, a promotion we’re sponsoring that helps call attention to all the fine arts events in our county in the month of May. We’ve got all sorts of things on the schedule—high school performances, community band concerts, private dance studio recitals, a Broadway show…—and our performance last night was meant to punctuate this thing with a demonstration of what community arts is about—all ages, all walks, all interests doing what they love for all to hear and see…and to feel when your hair raises because a brass line has just shouted at you with accented half notes until their veins pop in their foreheads.

We assembled an honor band from seven local high schools and mixed the kids in with our own wind section to form a 70-plus member band, and this group opened the concert with Nehlybel’s Estampie. You won’t find it on Youtube, so you’ll have to trust me when I say it’s a fun, powerful, driving piece. The kids handled themselves very well on stage, perfectly focused and nerves in order. A lot of them had parents in the audience, so it was a proud moment.

We reset the stage to seat the orchestra minus kids, and we performed Respighi’s Pines of Rome. If you haven’t heard this, you really should take time to listen. You can find this on youtube, but do yourself one better and buy a good recording of it. You’ll want to listen to it more than once and wallow around in its goodness.

This music covers the emotional bases—starting out sprightly, invoking puckish children playing in the gardens of Borghese, running around on light feet and getting themselves into mischief. You just want to wring their scrawny little necks, if only you could catch them. And then all at once, you’re in the catacombs of the Eternal City where history lies, the bones of people who were once scampering children themselves but are now nearly dust. And then you’re on Janiculum Hill with your sweetheart, forgetting all of your troubles and basking in what’s right in life.

You know, I arrived at the hall last night slightly angry and a little hurt over something, and I pounded out the notes of Estampie with rage in my heart. I sat down for Pines with tension building in my shoulders, but during the second and third movements, I could feel all that tension and anger slipping away—listen to the trumpet solo from off stage and the nightingale floating from tree to tree and the clarinet singing its love song. You can’t be negative and agitated when you’re surrounded by such ethereal and lovely music.

But hold onto your chair because a battalion of Roman soldiers is about to come at you with their stomping feet on the Appian Way. We pulled out the stops for the final movement with a level of intent I don’t believe I heard from this group during rehearsals. And I had to fight back tears from the power and emotion this piece evokes.

So, do you see? We start out as carefree children running ramshod over the earth, and we grow up to become thoughtful lovers. And when it’s over, we’re buried below ground to make room for the next batch of light-footed children who replace us and on and on. And there is triumph and determination in all of it.

Well, the second half of the concert was devoted to Orff’s raucous and occasionally baudy Carmina Burana. The orchestra was backed by a 150-voice choir, and our already big sound was amplified. Carmina isn’t a sheet of music, it’s a book, and my book was well worn. The bottom corners of the pages were stained with the thumb prints of dozens of other second horn players who had played from the thing before me, and I found comfort in that. Think of all the other people who turned those pages, sometimes quickly to catch the next measure and sometimes slowly to discover they need to ready a mute or make note of a changing key signature. Will they be in bass clef or treble with the next phrase? Be ready.

Carmina is too big to break apart here, so I’ll just say go listen to it, and not just the opening movement that we’ve all heard dozens of times. Listen to the whole thing, and then see if you don’t stand up for a private ovation with that final screaming, ranting plea to Fortuna, the goddess of fortune. It’s heart pounding and sweet and funny, and mind the bass drum. It will part your hair.

If you'd like to hear a more indepth discussion of the music we performed last night, here is the pre-concert chat (shot and produced by Husband and I) featuring our conductor, Eric Benjamin: