Sounds of the Season

My favorite part of Christmas is the music. Okay okay! Let's be real. My real favorite part of Christmas is celebrating the birth of Christ. Buuuuut! Whilst celebrating the great coming of our Savior, one often finds celebratory words put to...wait for it...music. The secular stuff is pretty good, too. Ready for some trivia? My favorite sacred piece: ooo, tough one - probably "Silent Night." I do love a good "Lo How a Rose," though, and "Good Christian Men Rejoice" makes me jolly. Favorite secular piece: definitely "The Christmas Waltz." Love it, love it, love it. Right now I'm listening to the full Nutcracker score. Gets me every time. More trivia - did you know that "Coventry Carol" was written as the mothers' lament when King Herrod was killing all their infant sons? That's what someone told me at orchestra rehearsal last night. I'd like a second opinion.

As my fellow musicians can attest, this season is probably the busiest one for people who love listening to music, making music, and appreciating music. Especially for those who make music, it's a very busy time. These days I don't make music for money, so my schedule isn't quite as full of Christmas parties and church services as it has been in the past, but that hasn't stopped the music from coming to me, as you'll see.

Last Tuesday afternoon I left the office at 3 o'clock to catch the metro to Bethesda, Maryland. The Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic was scheduled to perform a special one-night-only Christmas concert at the Strathmore Concert Hall (totally gorgeous, by the way) that evening at 8 pm. I will preface this story by stating that this is the longest day I can remember in recent history. You might think it was only 24 hours, but I must have fallen through the space-time continuum somehow. I arrived at the concert hall ready to rehearse for two hours. We had a lot of music to go over. Several guest artists made appearances with the orchestra that evening, so we had to go over our pieces for each one of them. What a disaster! One guy never got his music for a piece, so he was singing along in the wrong key. One guy said he'd only ever played the love theme from The Godfather in c minor, and he wanted the entire orchestra to transpose the piece so he could play it "like [he'd] been playing it for 23 years." We couldn't do that. Let me rephrase - most of us string players couldn't do that, so the guy had to play his oboe in g minor instead. Then, of course, every time we were ready to rehearse with a different soloist that person was nowhere to be found. Ultimately our dress rehearsal ran a bit over time. We all had a sick feeling that the concert would be the same way.

It was. We had less than an hour and a half's worth of music to play. We started the program promptly at 8pm. You know what time we ended? 10:30pm!!! Yes, thanks to our emcee/guest oboist, we ran an hour longer than necessary. Never have I heard a man tell so many stories! And I am now aware that he has not only played at Strathmore, but at the Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and all over Europe as well. You know what was especially fun? After we played the Godfather theme and our oboe/emcee man had made his "impromptu" appearance he grabbed the mic, tried to make a joke about c minor, said "Hit it, Steve" to our keyboardist, and proceeded to play the entire piece again in c minor. Apparently, it was really important that the audience hear him play this piece in the key with which he was most comfortable. Gah! I worked very hard to school my features. People could have seen me roll my eyes, after all. Well, I heard enough anecdotes and bad jokes that night to last me throughout the entire Christmas season. This man would set the mic down and start walking off stage, then turn around and come back to tell another story he forgot to mention previously. I couldn't tell if the audience loved or hated him. Maybe both. But the icing on the cake was dropped from the metaphorical spatula when this emcee joined the orchestra for our final number, the "William Tell Overture." He fiddled with his chair and music stand for a bit, got settled, looked at his watch and whispered quite conspicuously and in all seriousness to our conductor, "We need to speed this one along, Ul, we're out of time." I just about stabbed him with my bow. Don't worry, at the last minute I remembered Christmas is about sparing, not spearing.

I mentioned that the fateful Tuesday was the longest day in recent history. We concluded the concert at 10:30pm. I walked to the metro, waited for 10 minutes, rode the rail for 30 minutes, switched platforms to catch the next train, waited for 20 minutes, caught the Orange line and walked home from my metro stop. I got home about midnight. Too late for this ol' gal! It took me the rest of the week and weekend to catch up on my sleep. You do realize that missing two hours of work meant I made it up the rest of the week by either staying late or coming in early. Staying late is the bane of my existence, so I chose to come in early. That did not help the sleepyness.

Okay, so that was Strathmore. A detailed description, I know, but you need to realize that the pain you experienced reading my tale is nothing to the pain I experienced living it. Yeegads! You ready for another story about music? Okay, here it is.

Every year the Office of External Affairs, of which I am an employee, has an office door decorating contest. Every office decorates its door. We all vote on our favorite door at the office party, and the winners receive a half day off work. Tempting. This year we had a little office meeting - there are 6 of us total in our cubicle-ridden file cabinet of an office- and decided that in order to be competitive this year we needed to stimulate not just the eyes but the ears as well. I did not volunteer my musical services. No indeed, I was volunteered by another. You see, I generally like to keep it mum around the office that I play the violin. Having this knowledge encourages my coworkers to ask me to play for things like office parties. I always nip that in the bud as quickly as possible, but I can never quite wipe away the disappointment they feel for not being able to procure free entertainment. Plus, this punky's not a solo player. No, I like to play with an ensemble...if the occasional solo is thrown my way just because I happen to be playing the lead first violin part then fine, I'll do it! But I'm not about to set up my stand and be the only thing for people to listen to. Blech. Regardless, my boss proposed a fetching idea for our audio stimulation. "I'll sing," she says, "and Gillian can play the violin." AHHHHHHHHHH!!! I didn't say no, though, because the prize is worth the risk. So tomorrow afternoon I will be playing "The 12 Days of Christmas" with my office's resident flutist. Don't worry, we're just going to record ourselves on a little digital recorder and attach it to our door so people can play it at their leisure while they peruse our display of the 12 Days of the Economy. Or did we decide on the 12 Days of a Campaign? I think the campaign one (think fundraising, not political).

Anyway, I just got home from work after a little practice session with the office arranger/flutist. Great arrangement, by the way. We'll make those Office of External Affairs people proud! Can you believe how much work we've put into this? I mean, JT actually took the time to write out a score for flute, violin and voice. Impressive. And it better pay off! I could use that extra half day to sleep and stuff.

So I rounded out the week with another orchestra rehearsal. We're playing 2 concerts with violinist Jenny Oaks Baker (www.wmpamusic.org) and her repertoire includes some fun fiddley Christmas tunes. "I Saw 3 Ships" does sound much more exciting when you're pretending you're Irish. Attempting to fiddle (a favorite pastime of mine) and playing Christmas music (a favie for life) are going to make these upcoming concerts WMPA's best yet! If you're in the DC area stop by. You won't be disappointed. Plus, I'll wave to you from stage and flash a toothy grin for the camera. Booyah!

(See that pretty picture at the top? That's 925. Nice, id'nit?)

Election Day

I guess elections are a pretty big deal when you live in the capital of anything. The government's hub, if you will. Every day I come home to leaflets, pamphlets and flyers littering my front stoop. Vote Obama, Vote McCain, Time for Change! Blahdeeblooblahbloopers. At least once a day some well meaning campaign volunteer knocks on the door of 925 to find out who I'm voting for and if I need more information on his/her candidate. Don't judge me, but sometimes I just tell people I'm voting for whoever their candidate is. It makes them leave me alone. Or sometimes, if I answer the door with my phone to my ear it makes them go away quicker. Tactics, people.

These past few days have been the worst. Now it's at least twice a day that volunteers stop by. Near the metro stops they congregate in throngs, jumping up and down and yelling at me to vote. Seriously, that actually happens with the jumping and everything. When I get off the metro there are at least four people standing at the top of the escalators, homemade banners waving ferociously in the breeze. Can banners wave ferociously? Well, they do here. Yipes. It's madness, I tell you. Utter madness. I feel like a celebrity. People follow me around, asking me my opinion & telling me how to pose--er, vote. This has been happening for a month now, you realize. Cute elderly folk would sit in the metro just past the gates and give people forms to register to vote. Voting lines have been long as all get out. Not for me though, this ponky voted absentee-style. For whom? None of your dang business.

Government employees don't get Election Day off. Ridiculous, right? I know! We get Inauguration Day off, which is a pretty sweet deal - what with MLK, Jr. day it makes for a nice 4-day weekend right before my bday - but I want today off! They don't know that I don't need to go vote. What if the line is 4 hours long? I should have excused absences! Maybe I need to have a 5 hour prayer vigil before I vote, and then I have to wait in a 6 long hour line. They need to respect me! Oh well, I can't have everything. I do get a holiday a week from today for Veteran's Day, so I really shouldn't complain. Ohp, too late.

So did you vote yet? If I hear that question one more time, I'm going to take out a giant ink stamp that says YES I VOTED, FOOL and pound it straight into homey's forehead. Donezo. Homey don't play that. I'll tell you what homey does play, though...online election coverage during work hours. Yes, that's right. Fine, if you're going to make me work I'm going to keep refreshing Washingtonpost.com like it's my job all day long. As my friend Q says, "I like watching the states turn colors." Totally brill.

So in other random news, I went to my first (and not last) Coldplay concert on Halloween. It was AMAZING. I love when people are awesome live and not just on a doctored album. No, I did not dress up. I don't do costumes. Overrated. But I did jam out and take lots of pictures on my cell phone cause I forgot my camera. Of course, I don't know how to upload the photos to my computer. So you'll just have to picture it in your mind's eye. Coldplay, the Verizon Center, Chinatown DC, me and my roommate Kristen, section 205. Good visual. The band came into the audience at one point to play a quick set and they were only about 60 feet from me. AHHHHHH! Love love love love love them. Alright, gushing over.

Next on the random list, orchestra. We had two concerts last month, and the second one went a lot better for me than the first one did. Mainly, I was well rested. Secondly, I was focused on the notes and better rehearsed. We played at the Church of the Epiphany in downtown DC, and it was great. I love playing in churches, especially when playing sacred music. It just fits. We had a really good turn out, so hopefully people will spread the word about the orchestra. Now that our first concert is behind us, we've started rehearsals for our December shows. You know what that means...Christmas music!!! YAY YAY YAY YAYYYYYYY! I have a hard and fast rule for myself, as do many, that I will not listen to Christmas music before Thanksgiving. I want to give that important holiday its due. However, I just can't help it that I have to rehearse "Coventry Carol" and "I Saw Three Ships" and more before that day. I mean, I have to do it. Sho hate it, she says quite facetiously. WMP is hosting a guest artist for the Christmas...oops, sorry, Holiday...concert and she's fiddling along to some classic Christmas melodies. I'm excited about that part. I do love a good fiddle session. In fact, I've been listening to my Natalie McMasters CD a lot recently. All I want to do is jig around to some good Irish tunes. Story of my life.

Anyhoo, I suppose that's the word. Oh, I should probably tell you that the picture on this post is a little old. It's from this summer when my friends Katie and Alexandra came to visit me and we went to the Lincoln Memorial. I was moved to make a speech...to the ground, apparently. Either that or I'm a very demonstrative reader. Bye bye.

Violin Nation, President: not me so much

Greetings, travelers. Welcome to the oasis. Parched? Have a tall glass of...I really really really should have practiced more last week! Blerg. Just yesterday I participated in the season opener for the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic. My performance was, well, less than thrilling. The same cannot be said, however, for my colleagues and peers. Cheers to the WMP! We had a solid first concert, accompanied by chorus. And with the added fan base of the chorus, we even had a solid audience, too. In fact, my weekend was bookended by some great music. Listen well, children, and I will tell you the tale...

The other day, my roomie Kristen and I were walking through a neighborhood park close to 925. We saw, on a telephone pole, a flyer for a FREE chamber music concert performed by the IBIS (I still don't know what that stands for) at the Lyon Park Community Center. The flyer assured us that the theme of the evening was "movie music", and you should know that I can never, ever turn down an opportunity to hear movie music. That settled it. We had plans for Friday night. When Friday came around I skipped merrily home from the metro. No, that's a lie. I would never skip home. How embarrassing. I walked home with a bit of spring to my step, delighted that the weekend was nigh and the temperature was high. Nope, lied again. The temperature was not high, it was more like perfection. We'll say 70s. Soooo, I entered my house, sorted the mail, walked up the stairs with my mail in hand, passed through my doorway and immediately plopped down in front of my new computer.

Here's a side note: I got a new computer. Yes, friends. I am the new owner of Laurel's technologically delicious Mac Mini. It sits primly on a ghetto black coffee table in my room, and it works like a dream. I received the highly anticipated computer package the previous day (Thursday) so I was still working on personalizing it and getting all my settings adjusted to my liking. Oh, I'll have you know that I set it up all by myself. I'm no slouch.

That being said, I spent a bit of time playing on the computer before I took off with Kristen to run some errands before the concert. I would just like to say that every time I drive around Arlington and the Pentagon and the Potomac it just renews my excitement for living in DC. We were just running an errand to Pentagon City and there was the Air Force Memorial, piercing the evening sky. That's probably my favorite memorial, by the way. It's so cool. Anyway, I saw that magnificent feat of engineering on my way to Costco. Costco is not a magnificent feat of engineering. It's more like a magnificent setting for organized chaos. It brought back so many memories of shopping with the 'rents at Sam's Club. Good times, good childhood. Okay, so after some errand running, Kristen and I stopped to pick up some dinner at Noodles & Co. (don't tell my P90X coach) before heading to the community center. We didn't think it would be a good idea to eat our smelly pasta dinners in the community center, so we sat at a picnic table in the park right outside and scarfed down our meals in the dark. We walked into the community center, found a seat near the back, and were promptly transported to a dream world of magic. Well, I certainly was.

IBIS is made up of 6 musicians: a string quartet, flutist, and harpist. All the musicians are employed either by the Kennedy Center Opera Orchestra or the Boston Esplanade POPS, or something like that. They're all professionals - that's the point. I heard a violin duo piece, string quartet pieces, a flute/harp duo, a harp solo (lovely piece by John Williams from Angela's Ashes), and a quintet arrangement of Mischief Managed from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, also by John Williams. I LOVE JOHN WILLIAMS! Ahem. Anyway, it was great. It was free, it was musically sound, and it was creative. Me likey.

The rest of Friday night and Saturday passed in a blur of sleep, movie watching, computer playing-onning, and birthday partying. Sunday I arose for my first WMP orchestra. No, I wasn't nervous. I was too sleepy to be nervous. Plus, I sit at the back of the second violins. Not too much pressure there. However, I am pleased to announce that we had a good first show. The violins were a wee bit skimpy, seeing as how we were missing two of our first violins (that's what happens with a volunteer community orchestra), but we pulled it off. I heard nothing but good things from the audience members. The Hymn of Praise for chorus and orchestra, written by F. Mendelssohn, was really lovely. It's murder on the violinists to play. We have practically no breaks and consistent brush strokey 8th notes for pages on end. It's very exhausting. But I made it, sleep deprived as I was. And we get a second chance to make it even better when we perform the show again this coming Sunday. The WMP's season is comprised of 5 different programs. Each show is performed twice, once in Alexandria, VA, and once in DC. So this Sunday is the DC Sunday. After that, it's back to rehearsals for our Christmas concert. My favie! :) I mean, just yesterday I was making sure that all my Christmas CD's are in iTunes to make for the best Christmas playlist this town's ever seen.

By the way, it is very difficult to rebuild one's playlist when one's iPod has gone to iPod heaven. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if my iPod was in purgatory with as much trouble as it gave me at the end of its life. I had some great music I'd downloaded from my brother and sister's computer and now it's all gone cause I never had the songs in my own song arsenal. Fool of a Took! Oh well, I'll build it back up again. No worries. That's what the iTunes store is for.

So that's that. I'm enjoying my new computer. Trying to find a Mac compatible webcam + mic so I can Skype my sister like it's my job. Oh, and I did get a call from the Alexandria, KY Police Department. "Oh, sorry about that. You can just disregard that citation. It shouldn't have even been mailed to you. Our systems were down that day so the officer wasn't able to verify the license plate at the time." All one big misunderstanding, folks. Happens to the best of us.

So this week I'm holding down the fort at the office, preparing myself to be a stellar volunteer at the Smithsonian's national board meeting this Thursday and Friday, and trying to finish my book for book club next week. Cheers, y'all!

Three-day Weekend

Yesterday I stayed in my pajamas all day. All day long I was in my pj's. Yesterday was Saturday, today is Sunday, and tomorrow...is Columbus Day. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Columbus for discovering land that eventually became this country. Without his dedication and hard work, I wouldn't have a holiday from work tomorrow. Boy am I glad for good ol' C.C. and his 1492 greatness.

As you might have guessed based on previous posts, I've had a fairly busy summer and fall. I've spent my time getting adjusted to life in DC/Arlington, and I've been fortunate enough to see some friends and family in the short time I've been here. Well, what with all the social activity I've had (cut to me, tooting my own horn) I needed a nice long weekend of doing nothing. What a delight it was yesterday to stay in bed all day, reading a book and watching movies and episodes of Friends. Oh, and occasionally going downstairs to get a chocolate chip cookie from the kitchen. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. I'll start with Friday.

My boss made my day on Friday when she told me I could slip out of the office early to start the weekend. I left at 4, much to my delight. I took the metro to Clarendon and realized I had enough time to stop by the post office before it closed. I'd planned to run this errand on Saturday, but since I was already out I figured I'd get it taken care of. I walked to the post office, crossing my fingers and hoping that the certified mail I was picking up was my stimulus check from the IRS. (The first one they sent me got lost in the mail during my move.) I walk up to the window and wait quite patiently as an employee rummaged through the postage bin. I opened the letter she presented me with, a bit surprised to see the return address, "Alexandria, KY, Police Department." According to the APD, I owe $50 for a parking citation I incurred on August 16th when I parked my green Dodge Dakota in a no-parking zone. Hmmmm. I definitely do not, nor have I ever, driven a green Doge Dakota. For my entire driver's life I've had my trusty little black Nissan Sentra. Also, I was not, nor have I ever been, in Alexandria, KY. Ever. I certainly wasn't there on August 16th. I was in DC. In a polite panic, I left a couple messages on various voicemails begging the administration in the police department to call me about this erroneous parking ticket. Bah! I anticipate that these good government people will have Columbus Day off, as I do, so hopefully Tuesday will be the day of reckoning when I take the Alexandria PD to task for its grave mistake.

The rest of Friday was peaceful. I watered the mums, I went through the mail, ate a giant homemade chocolate chip cookie and watched the series premiere of The Starter Wife. Brilliant! So then Saturday came along. I finished "The Sweet Far Thing" and was terribly disappointed by a cheap ending to an otherwise entertaining literary trilogy. I watched "Caramel" and was surprised at the mixture of Lebanese and French the characters spoke. Don't even ask me what I did with the rest of my day. I have no idea. But it was awesome.

Today I had orchestra rehearsal. We rehearsed with the chorus for the first time ever, and our first concert is a week from today. Yipes! It was a good rehearsal, though. Mendelssohn's Lobesgang (or something like that) is a really nice piece, though dreadfully long. My arms are aching by midway through. We had so much to go through today that we only had about a 7 minute break during our 3 hour rehearsal. Now that works out the arms. I came home from orchestra, and did what I normally do on Sunday nights: I got something to eat, talked to my roommates for a little bit and then put my last load of laundry in the dryer. I came upstairs and started preparing for slumber when I realized that I really don't have to do that. I get to sleep in AGAIN! Mwaaaaaahaahhahahahaha! So here I am at 11:30 on a Sunday night, still awake. Shocking, I know.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a beautiful day and I intend to take advantage of it. I might play some horrible tennis, maybe I'll go for a walk. There is this great island called Roosevelt Island (I think) on the Potomac River - it's a great place to go for a nature walk and enjoy the fresh air. Remind me to take you there when you visit. Anyway, there are numerous possibilities and I will explore all the options. Weee!

For those of you who don't have a 3-day weekend...sorry for your loss. For the rest of you, I wish you the best in all your endeavors. Hopefully they'll be as fun as mine. HA!