05/09/2024
Tidied the apartment, then rehearsed my songs. After lunch I opened the auditorium for the official tech rehearsal of the Channing House Spring Musicale. Previously this would have been a performance by the Chorus but the Chorus has been retired, or rather, Mary who was the director retired from the job, and nobody has stepped up to re-form the Chorus. Instead, Mary has made herself director of a musical variety show, eight acts by resident musicians. Tomorrow we give two concerts; today we rehearsed.
I say “we” because I am the 7th act on the bill, doing 2 songs with the guitar. Preceding me there is the Channing House Harmonica Group, doing 3 patriotic songs. Then Frances and John performing a classical piece for clarinet and piano. Then the Baroque Trio, Alice on cello, Kay on flute, Lou on recorder. Next up, Craig Allen, solo harmonica improvisations. The Jazzy Trio is Stew on box drum, Kay on flute, Arlene on piano. Followed by me, and then the Nameless Trio which is John and Kay, accompanying Jerry singing the Toreador Song. Singing it very well, by the way; Jerry is a real singer with some training.
So we got through all that, and I only messed up a couple of chords which hardly anyone noticed.
I had done a video recording of all this, and at 4:15 pm I took the USB drive out of the recorder up to my room and edited the video down to just the performance, dropping out all the chat and talking in between, and put it on Dropbox and sent an email to all the performers with a link to download it — by 5:30. Not bad turnaround time if I do say so.
Down to dinner, finished by 6:15, into the auditorium again to set up for the San Francisco Shakespeare troupe. Five actors, semi-pro and very good. They have been touring this one-hour condensed version of As You Like It for three weeks now, performing almost daily in schools and libraries, and they do three more shows this weekend. They came in, set up a portable backdrop, each of the five played several parts, and the whole thing was pretty entertaining.
Codgerville 