Collaboration in Audition Land

 I have had to take various auditions in my life, and most of them have been absolutely nerve-wracking and soul gutting... youth orchestra seating,  all-state orchestra seating, college/conservatory auditions, concerto competitions, juries, placement auditions... and in my adult life I have chosen to take a very small handful of professional auditions.  

In June, I took one audition, which was not only NOT nerve-wracking, but which was actually fun.

A democratic, condutorless chamber orchestra for which I have been invited to sub the full season the last two years was on the hunt for two new permanent violinists.  The initial audition list looked daunting, as I had a lot of other things going on in June, including two weeks with the Seattle Symphony and a full-length duo concert with Jared.  And on top of that, I was so very, very tired.  I wasn't sure I had the banswidth to put it together.  The chamber orchestra came back with a committe update; they had decided to make a change for regular subs, and let us enter the fray at the second round.  The second round, it turns out, required only the expositions of two string quartets - 2nd violin for the first movement of the Schubert A minor and 1st violin for the first movement of the Haydn "Quinten", two pieces with which I was already quite familiar, and which I love.  We were told that at the audition we would play them with other members of the orchestra.  I decided to participate, as I knew I could get the music together on very limited practice time, and I generally feel confident as a chamber musician.  (I had secret hopes that the other violinist would be Andy, an absolutely fabulous fiddle player with a golden sound who currently holds a titled position in the Seattle Symphony, and who has a chamber music background.  It would be such a treat to get to play with him, even for just a few minutes!)

As we approached the audition day, I began to work off the intuitive assumption that the audition would not just be a play-through, but actually a bit of collaborative rehearsal.  I was able to prepare with the help of friends.  I was able to play the excerpts a couple of times for the other musicians at church. Jared played through them on a few occasions with me on the cello part.  And three days before the audition, we were joined by two other friends to rehearse the excerpts as a full quartet.

At the audition time, I was greeted at the check-in desk by familiar faces, and was led up to the group warm up room by the proctor, a familiar and lovely colleague in two different orchestras.   Everyone in the group warm up room were folks I already knew and had played with, so it felt more like a community and less like a competition.  I felt self-conscious about practicing the excerpts there, however, so I worked on my martele scales, Yost, and Sevcik Op. 3, which are my most well-rounded warm up options.  By the time I was moved to the solo warm up room before my turn, I was already comfortable and ready to go, so I did some tone and tempo cueing practice with the pieces we would be playing.

When the proctor/friend came for me, I was in a place to ask about her day and her kids, and she told me - as I had suspected and hoped - that we would be having a 15-minute rehearsal.  When we walked into the church sanctuary where the audition was, I saw the golden-toned Andy on the platform with his violin, as well as a very familiar violist and cellist.  The audience consisted of a violinist who has been my standpartner on multiple occasions and is a fellow SSO sub with whom I have had many nice conversations, a Seattle Symhony flutist who is part of the heartbeat of the conductorless orchestra (a person who always knows how to rehearse effectively and in ways that builds others up), and my proctor friend.  

I was so comfortable among these positive presences, that I was able to greet everyone, get situated,  and take off my shoes, as I generally do in that orchestra for rehearsals, as we stand.  Barefoot feels more comfortable and grounded.  As we rehearsed, I was able to make requests about tempo, articulation, and dynamics, reference things from the editions of the score I was using, plus listen to and use constructive feedback from other members of the quartet and the audience.  It was truly collaborative, and I felt right at home and in my element.

As it turned out, they picked seven finalists, including myself, for five violin spots, as they are cleaning up their roster, and the two who aren't selected for permanent spots will be at the top of the sub list, where I already was.  There is no way to lose!   

For the final round, I will be "on trial" for the May concert set, and I expect to sub with the group at least once or twice before then.  I already feel like a contributing member, and regardless of the committee's final decisions,  I will be a contributing part of the community.   

The competition in classical music can be so high level and so difficult to make it through, and this group and this audition is such a breath of fresh air.

The Summer of House Projects

It has wound up being a very project-y summer.  

But before all that started, June was so very full of music, that I was exhausted and so very done by its end.   On June 1st Jared and I played a concert with Seattle Chamber Orchestra.  The following weekend we played a pair of chamber concerts with students of a piano teacher we know.  We also had our end-of-year studio recital, which I did the programs and good chunk of the accompanying for, not to mention the set up and clean up.  I also ended playing the last two subscription sets of the season with the Seattle Symphony, RATHER last minute, and then Jared and I took our full-length duo program on its first outting to our neighborhood retirement home.  Oh, I also took an audition for a permanent violin spot in the North Corner Chamber Orchestra.  And I did the group matching, scheduling, music selection, transcriptions, and communications for our annual July strings camp, while also finishing up my school year teaching and doing the summer lesson scheduling and starting those. The kids all finished school mid-month, and one of them flew to Texas for a week.  There were also friend things, a planned camping attempt that turned into a visit to Oregon family instead, and medical appointments. 

That brings us to July, in which another kid went to Texas, we had our strings camp including park concert, Jared and I played our duo concert at the wine shop, we read some quartets with friends, we actually went camping for two nights, we were treated to most of the Seattle Chamber Music Society Summer Festival concerts,  we canceled our 20th anniversary trip sans kids due to a sick kid (first trip together in ten years 😭,) I went to the dentist twice, two kids went to VBS, we taught lots of lessons, more friend stuff, and my first giant physical project started.

That project was the reorganization and cleaning out of the back bedroom.  

(It should be remembered that aside from the storage shed and two teaching studios on our property which have very specific uses, our 1942 cabin contains 480 square feet, housing currently 5 people, 2 cats, and unfortunately a 21st century volume of material possessions. As younger people grow up, needs change, and that means creative reorganization of that small space to meet the requirements of the moment.  I will also mention that we do have to put sections of group class into our kitchen a couple days a week, as well.)

The back bedroom "remodel" cost me $57 plus untold sweat equity, time, and decision making.  $40 was for the loft bed for Laurel, $10 was for the cube book shelf that would fit atop her dresser under the loft, and $7 was for the twin sheet set. The nearly new mattress was free, and everything else, including the curtains around her new private pod was made from things we already owned.  I moved lots of furniture,  scrubbed floors, measured and puzzled and measured and puzzled again, disassembled built-in hardware in the closet, threw away two full trash bags of garbage,  sent another bag to textile recycling,  gave away bags of things to the Neighborhood Buy Nothing and Goodwill, and found a buyer for a very giant, no-longer used 1980s themed doll house.  So very much sweeping and vacuuming and organizing.  The back bedroom feels good, clean, usable and more spacious than before.  We currently have three people and a cat sleeping in it.  Including the "closet", the room is rather precisely 161 inches long and 116 inches wide, for an approximate square footage of 129 feet.  It is the larger of the two bedrooms.  (The front bedroom is 6 inches shorter and 4 inches narrower, which makes a noticeable difference when tetris-ing furniture options with nearly no margin.)  I have absolutely used over and over the collaborative proactive solutions Plan B process- such valuable life skills!- to work through making decisions which accommodate all the varied needs in our house.

Yesterday, I started on what promises to be the bigger project. This project will involve subdividing the living room into living room plus private bedroom pod for my eldest.  So far I have spent $0 on it, as we acquired a second loft bed and mattress from the neighborhood Buy Nothing and plan to wall off the area with a large bookcase from the front bedroom and the Hutch of Doom.  I will end up spending some money on it eventually, as I will need to aquire materials for making and hanging curtains around it, at the very least. The sweat equity and decision making and cleaning out are going to be more massive, more time consuming and more difficult on this one.  

But... as I started unloading the Hutch of Doom in preparation for rotating it 90 degrees, I found the missing first disc of the two-disc set I returned to the library two years ago without ever watching it, and took it back to the library, as well.   I am vaguely hopeful that we will find the set of car/house keys lost in our living room on July 31st of 2020.  It will be fairly messy and chaotic in the house for another week or two as this project moves through phases in a crowded and in-use space. This project is slated to make more space in the front bedroom so that Jared has a place to store AND PRACTICE his three cellos and actually have a functional location for his clothes (don't even ask how they are having to be piecemeal stored right now, because you would be too depressed to find out.)

Those are the two largest projects which I am in charge of.  This last week I also spent many hours on the Fall lesson/group class  scheduling tetris for our business and am awaiting complaints and approvals to publish the final draft.  There is another smaller, quieter project I have been working on alongside which can be discussed in due time, and another three house projects I'd love to get to, but can live without...

Jared and his dad are in charge of another entirely different Big Project.  It was meant to be a simple reroof- newfangled tarpaper and shingle replacement- taking hopefully three days while I was busy teaching at the Japan-Seattle Suzuki Institute the first week of August.  But as they got into it, it grew to massive proportions.  It now has included removing, rebuilding and replacing all the rafters and eaves and front porch overhang, putting in new insulation and venting, and cutting and placing new sheeting before the roofing part can be gotten to.  In addition to many hours of solo work Jared has done, he and his dad have worked together all day and well into the evening 11 days so far, and his dad is coming back tomorrow for more...

Needless to say, the other camping trips to Mt. Saint Helens and Kalaloch Beach we had blocked out time for this summer for are out, but hopefully we should make it through the rapidly approaching school year without roof leaks and with people able to sleep and have the desired levels of privacy in ways that are needed, and people in this house will have better ways to manage their own stuff without getting in each other's way as much...

I tell you (ironically, while lounging in bed and typing this out!): there is no rest for the weary.

Short and semi-anonymous stories

 My kids are growing up, and I don't want to embarrass them....  But they have done some really grown-up things lately. 

My third grade kid was tired of both parents leaving for rehearsals and having to stay with sisters, so he insisted on coming with us for two weeks.  During these rehearsals and concerts, he was very quietly contained and spent most of his time studying the NIV and KJV versions of the Bible using a concordance and also pretending to be a pilot using all the cockpit controls to fly a plane.  He prepared for these caregully timed departures from home using his watch and packing the car with his study materials, cans of beans and vegetables,  utensils, and can openers, so he would have a dinner he could eat.  During some of the rehearsals,  he also befriended various people who weren't playing at the moment and took them on his airplane rides.  All of these friends he made were females in their 60s, and they seemed to enjoy him as much as he enjoyed them.

My newly minted teenager has been spending around 20 hours a day on the couch, which is ok in one sense, as they are doing online school. However, the grandparents came for two days this week for a construction project, and this kid jumped up and became an important part of the crew.  She helped with unloading the old cabinet, shelf demolition, installing the new cabinet, and organizing and reloading the new cabinet.  When the overhead cabinets needed new hinges, she was part of the unload/re-drill/organize/clean/reload team.  But most amazing of all, she took it upon herself with no hint or suggestion from anyone else to plan and prepare dinner for the seven of us both nights, taking into consideration everyone's various dietary needs, which include vegan, FODMAP, and gluten-free.  She wrangled assistants of various ages to care for things like run to the store for green onions, set the table, cut vegetables for the salad, and wash a pot between preparing of different dishes.  She overlooked no detail and made lovely, large meals.  Also when I was up at two in the morning feeling unwell, she again went nto caregiver mode and  helped me find out which medication I could take and got it out for me.

My first grader has been quite hard to feed, as she mostly only likes what she school cafeteria serves plus sweets.  She will often skip a meal at home due to her strong feelings about this.  Last night, however, she was proactive.   She heard the ice cream truck in the neighborhood, pulled out her little wallet of earnings from some special chores a couple of weeks ago, and ran over to the park to make her purchase.  She ate her ice cream dinner out of doors so as not to drip on the floor, then put the stick and wrapper in appropriate receptacles instead of on the floor or on the furniture.  Then she checked the time, saw that her bedtime approached,  brushed her teeth, and went to bed without being asked.

Little Flash Backs

 I am sure this experience is common to many people, perhaps even most, and I think it has been common to me my whole life.  So common, in fact, that it barely registered.  But lately for some reason I have been noticing it more pointedly and thinking about it.  I mostly seem to pay attention to it when I am teaching.  I don't know if that means it happens more frequently when I am in the middle of a lesson or if it just means I am more aware of it under those circumstances.

What I am referring to is tiny, brief flash backs to moments or places from my earlier bits of life:

I am hidden up in my tree, sitting on a leafy oak branch in my back yard while my thoughts run expansively and relentlessly in my shaded and slightly uncomfortable retreat.... 

I am walking into my violin lesson with great anticipation at the Dallas Suzuki Institute and noticing the industrial white walls and industrial grey carpeting....  

I am in my Austin grandparents' backyard on a cool day looking at the laundry line stretching down towards the creek.... 

I am sitting in the fourth and fifth grade Sunday school class on the raised wooden platform behind the office dividers, listening to other kids struggling to read the big words and long sentences of a Bible passage, feeling both confused about why it was difficult for them and unneccesarily pleased with myself at my own good reading skills... 

I am on the play structure at preschool, feeling panicked about the wind and holding my hair so it wouldn't blow away....  

I am riding the bus in Aspen to an early morning rehearsal and smelling the cold, fresh, mountain air as my fingers freeze, feeling so very alive....

I am riding in the car with my Kindergarten friend Erin, along with her mom and younger twin brothers Chad and Derek, smushed into their tiny air condition-less car on a hot day; the windows are down and I feel like I am gasping for air, because the wind rushes in.... 

I am walking to the back pack cabinet at the end of the school day in fourth grade; some boys tell me they looked through my bag - my face turns hot and my pulse throbs in my ears at the invasion of my privacy....

I am in the sandbox in my back yard as it gets dark, and a large toad hops in and terrifies me, as it seems nearly as large as my head....

I am in the upstairs lounge of a dorm at Texas Christian University on a hot summer evening, struggling to play the complicated scales of the Suzuki Etude quickly from memory with the practice cassette my teacher had sent along....

I am hiking 17 miles at Mt. Rainier with Jared and an out-of-town friend in less-than-optimal shoes with scanty provisions while silently experiencing the nausea of my first pregnancy, but I am tough....

I am sitting in the shaded and peaceful dining room of our Birmingham condo reading some great and difficult literature and listening to some rather ancient choral music while Jared was working long hours, filled with lots of big and mostly happy feelings....

I don't always know why these tiny vignettes intrude.  On occasion they are tied in some way to what the student and I are working on at the moment.  I imagine that the proverbial life flashing before the eyes just before one's demise might be a string of these tiny encoded glimpses.  I see them quite a lot now, but don't suppose I am dying.

I Closed the Loop

 When I was around 7, our family was on a road trip. We were stopped at a cafe/gift shop/gas station area at one point, and my dad came out with a hard cover book for me:  Nancy Drew Mystery #1: The Secret of the Old Clock.   It was the yellow flashlight edition, a 1959 reedit of the original 1930 story.  It turns out I cannot read in the car for extreme motion sickness, and we had to pull off the road for me to vomit. 

 Nonetheless, I was hooked on Nancy Drew.  I collected a few more over the years, but the real bonanza came when we would visit the downtown library every now and then, and I would acquire three or four of these delicious tomes.  I would set to reading one and would be incapable of pulling myself away for the hours it took to complete it.  My mother was after me to go outside and play, to do my homework,  to practice, to sleep, but these were impossible to put any brain on until Nancy had solved her mystery.  Being a sensitive child, I also found these adventures to be quite hair raising, to the point of being kept awake at night thinking about break-ins and kidnappings, and jumping at the smallest sounds.  I was amazed at Nancy's brilliant hunches and prowess at solving thorny problems with extreme bravery (unable to fathom that she was really a fictional character, bent to the will of the author of the month.)

I think I eventually read everything the library happened to have in stock of the yellow flashlight edition.  I also read some of the newer publishing run which were all paperback, and I quit pretty quickly.  Nancy and her friends were much more flashy and hip, and every mystery seemed centered around the latest technology.  In my mind, they had lost all their charm and intelligence.

A few years ago, my eldest was on a Nancy Drew kick, and acquired two volumes.  Others visited us from the library, and many visited us on audio recordings posted to YouTube. I met a couple new volumes under those circumstances which I had not read before. 

In June or July 2025, I wrote the complete list of the first publishing run of the Nancy Drew's in my notebook (#1-#56), and then read them all, mostly in order.  E had the aforementioned two in her collection, and all the others I borrowed from the county library.  Fortunately interlibrary loan is a thing, so I was able to get most of them hard copy.  There were a few which the library only owns in digital copy at the moment, so those I checked out and read on the library app on my phone.  Weekend before last, I finally finished the complete reading project, and frankly, I was very proud of myself for sticking with it and being thorough. 

Here are a few stats from my project...

Total number of books read:  56

Number read in hard copy: 50

Number read digitally: 6

Number I had read before completely: 34

Number I had read before in part: 3

Number I had never read before: 19

Here are a few more observations...

Although numbers 1-46 had all been re-edited over the years and some substantially, there was a certain thread of subtle racism remaining.  This disapated, though not completely, by the time the series ended.  #47 The Mysterious Mannequin was the first book published still in its original format from 1970.

The series ran until 1979.  

The very earliest mysteries were all set in and around "River Heights", which I estimate to be in New Jersey.  However, there was a strong thread of exoticism introduced fairly early on, with adventures happening in Arizona, New Orleans, NYC, Maryland, California, Ohio, Amish Country, Florida, and also Mexico, Scotland, Turkey, Hong Kong, and Japan.

A couple of the stories bordered on sci-fi, but most of the mysteries were maxed out technologically with wigs and make-up and secret sliding panels.

They were not at all scary now, since I have additional decades of life-experience through which to enjoy them.  Also, the police were way too trusting of Nancy and visa versa.  Very much not legal any more...

I was sad to get to the end, but before I finished, I made up my kind what to read next, and that is The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency.  I already own volumes 1-5, and read volumes 6-9 from the public library when we lived in Rochester.  At that time, the series had only run to number 10, so I will get to go further now.  I have also listened to the children's prequel a few times on library audio book.  They are for a more mature and complex audience, and I am enjoying my third or so trip through the first volume again.

Click Track

 I had an interesting first for myself this week which is worth writing about.  I shall begin with the setting.

Last week, the kids had off from school and we had off from teaching, so we had several glorious uncommitted days in the spacious Oregon home and land of Jared's parents.  We came back Wednesday so that starting Thursday, Jared and I could play the set with Symphony Tacoma.  It was a really fun concert with both the choir and trumpet soloist- an old school chum.  Two works by Brahms, one by Artiunian, and one by Debussy.  

Monday was the back-to-school/back-to-teaching turn around, which I started off with a NOCCO rehearsal, for which I was was somewhat underprepared.  We worked on Mendelssohn's first symphony,  written when he was a likely-not-level-headed 15 year old.  And we worked on a rhythmically difficult but intriguing newish work by Cindy Cox, inspired by a photography exhibition she saw of some of the last wild places on earth.  It was definitely a first rehearsal situation with lots of "sausage making", working out the ensemble issues in changing meters with frequent 7/8, all conductorless.  Cindy was in town for the rehearsal to give us some musical guidance and inspiration.  And as luck had it, my final student of Monday had to reschedule, so I got to watch the last 20 minutes of Laurel's gymnastics class - a rare treat for me.

Tuesday through Thursday is where the click track story comes in.   I had been contracted to play a show with the Seattle Symphony called Elden Ring Symphonic Adventure.   I had not heard of Elden Ring before I was asked, but my eldest kid filled me in.  For those others of you not in the know, it is a role-playing adventure video game, set in the medival/fantasy genre.  There are kings and knights and dragons and elven women and monsters, and lots of battles and fires and ruins and sacrifices and spells, I think.  There was a whole screen play with some voice overs and sound effects and subtitles, divided into 12 separate segments.  This came with a touring conductor, a click track,  and an extra screen for the conductor which had countdowns to different cues and such.  

The violin 2 part was mostly sight readable - pages of tremolo and rests and long notes, interspersed with a few pages of Sevcik op. 3 type music, occasional very fast passages with an unpredictable mix of chromatics, which were basically background noise for the brass and choir, and the occasional really fast 7/4, conducted in an uneven 3 that I sometimes nailed and sometimes did not.  The music in general was either soft and magically atmospheric or it was the intensest moments from Carmina Burana.  It was fine, bit by bit, but overall, it didn't add up to anything.  It was a wandering pastiche, which makes sense given the context.  

The conductor I would better describe as a technology coordinator.  We got no instructions about dynamics, balance, phrasing, articulation, or anything of that nature.  We got lots of instructions about how we would come off of the grand pauses (which were dedicated strictly to cinematics) with a bar of clicks, followed by a second bar of clicks plus his providing the beat pattern.  And information about tempo changes.  The tempo changes were all written in the parts with precise metronome markings, e.g. quarter = 69, quarter =71, eighth = 135.  The marking were that precise, because it was all timed on the click track to match the action on the screen.  Also, sometimes when the music was very peaceful,  his conducting was rather... groovy.  He was low-key dancing to the click track, as opposed to the more traditional method of communicating the moods and gestures he wanted from the orchestra with his hands or facial expressions. 

Each stand had a stand light and a radio-controlled box clipped on.  The box had a radio antenna to connect it to the A/V booth, and it had two long wires with an ear bud and over-ear clip on the end.  The wire got in the way, and the ear bud was an OK fit, but the over-ear clip was a generic size for a person with much larger ears than I possess, so I did have to keep working to keep it attached.  My left ear held the click track, and my right ear held a foam ear plug.  I was sitting directly in front of the horn section, and some of the sound effects that came with the cinematics were... bone rattling.

My stand partner and I were sight reading at the Tuesday rehearsal, because that's where we were both in life.  We got along quite well, and I hope we will get to play together on the same stand again under more inspiring circumstances. 

At the Wednesday night show, I tried to watch the screen behind me, when feasible,  to get a sense of what the show was about.  It ended up being super overstimulating.  For tbe Thursday show, I very studiously looked only at my part, the conductor, the audience, and my fellow musicians, and it was *somewhat* easier to recover from.  The show started at 7:30 and didn't end until after 10:00.  The video game audience was pretty enthusiastic, and the second night, my stand partner and I spotted a group in the second box on the violin side in full costume with prop weapons and all.

Violin

 In the last two days of December I came into the long-term loan of a violin, an incredible gift.  It is owned by a close relative whose aunt and uncle bought it for her long ago. 

The story about the violin maker himself is quite interesting....

Matthew Hardie, of Edinborough, born in the 1700s, learned to make violins somewhere, perhaps London, but that bit of his life seems lost to history.  A well known French violinist, Alday, who had toured extensively with the still-remembered Viotti, found himself living in the British Isles after escaping the French Revolution.   He spent a handful of years in Edinborough, where it appears he hired Hardie to do some repairs on his Stradavarius violin around 1800.  Hardie apparently was quite taken with the instrument and began modeling his own builds after the Strad.  He was made two grades of instruments, as there was a split market for his products.  Better materials for the one, cheaper materials for the other, but both, apparently with the same fine craftsmanship.  The instrument on loan to me was part of his higher grade series, built in 1810.  I have wondered how many lives it has lived and where in its 216 years.

I knew when it was first offered to me that it was objectively a better instrument than the 1930 Paravinci I have been playing on for 26 years. 

https://share.google/emm1xE0gVyMcD3jlE

The Parravicini, though,  has become my entire violin personality and closest musical friend in that more-than-quarter of a century.  It is the one who has taught me how to create sound and has shaped my ear to what is possible.  Over the years I have considered replacing it with an upgrade (a formidable task, given the price of the tools of the trade!), yet I could never think too hard about it.  Contemplation felt like the sad and unfair task of replacing a dear friend.  And yet, I have run up against the Parravicini's musical edges many times,  not able to find more color, more clarity, and more sonority in its frame on many occasions....

The first couple of weeks after the package arrived, I alternated violins - the Parravicini feeling familiar, civilized,  and manageable - and the Hardie feeling vast, expanseful, and foreign, like a wild, untamable animal.  It was like trying to drive a very fancy sports car with touchy controls after a lifetime of tooling about in a dependable Ford.  My ears were so accustomed to gaging the reactions of the Parravicini that I didn't know at all what to listen for with the Hardie.

I played the instruments back to back for some family members in the first days, and the resonance and clarity of the Hardie stood out in the room.  One person, who is not himself a musician at all, described the sound of the Hardie as having "a deeper barrel" - very apt.

I knew the Hardie needed a bit of work.  The strings were high, meaning my left hand had to work much harder, and surely if nothing else, it would need a soundpost adjustment as it settled into its new climate and surroundings.   I had that work done in Seattle, while I played the Parravicini exclusively a couple of weeks.  The Hardie came back to me much clearer and easier to play, and ever more voluminous and resonant.

Since then I have been playing exclusively on the Hardie, because I wanted to give myself a good run in learning how to play such a different instrument.   I know there is more in it than I have yet accessed, but I am starting to feel comfortable with it.  I have listened to a recording of myself playing a bit of chamber music on it now, and I heard in my playing more color and nuance than I could hear when I played the same music on the Parravicini. 

I played a concert a week and a half ago (the one with the rats) - my first "professional" outting with the Hardie.  As it was, my standpartner's fiddle was in the shop, and she didn't much care for the loaner she was having to use.  I lent her the Parravinci for the set, and it was so fun to hear someone else playing it next to me.  She sounded quite nice on it.  I am missing the Parravicini a little bit and am thinking that I should set up an instrument rotation like what Jared does.  He has three cellos, and he plays each of them nearly every day to keep them in shape and keep himself learning and flexible. 

Musical Rats

 You might start by reading my story of nearly four years ago titled Calling All Vet Techs...

Tonight in a rehearsal with a small orchestra in a hundred-year-old church, our Boccherini was suddenly interrupted by shrill squeaking.  Two large, dark grey rats appeared on a cornice just below the rafters, apparently having come through a small hole in the wall.  The rat who was being chased fell twelve feet to the floor of the sanctuary, and began running wildly under the pews.  The rat who was doing the chasing scurried back and forth just a bit atop the cornice, then disappeared back into the wall.

All eyes in the now silent orchestra were attempting to track the loose rodent on the floor. One of the musicians, who is used to living in the country, walked toward it to try to chase it away from the rest of us.  The orchestra took to its feet, and some of the more city folk took to standing atop their chairs in panic.  

After a couple of minutes, the young, athletic, and panicked rat in question came dashing towards the orchestra.  The second violins, who were positioned on stage left, evacuated to the first violin side with an unceremonious shrieking stampede, followed shortly by the cello and bass section, who moved with more calm and decorum, as the rat ran up the steps of the platform.  The intrepid country pianist followed our furry neighbor through the door to the common area behind the sanctuary, and shut the door behind it so it would not bother us any further.  

It did reappear in our space from underneath another door with a larger gap when the rehearsal was shrunk at the very end to three players...

I was not remotely phased - see previous story.  I tried to help country pianist corner it to see if we could coax it out an exterior door, but it gave us the slip.