Posted by Sean Chisham on November 27, 2001 at 00:05:00:
In Reply to: V-W range posted by me on November 26, 2001 at 23:10:03:
The Vaughan Williams is a pretty good piece to sick your teeth into. The first really great recording of a tubist I ever owned was a crackly cassette tape copy of an album with John Fletcher playing this piece with the LSO. I must have listened to that tape a thousand times in high school. When I finally saw the piece at a local OctubaFest I bought it and tried to play it for All-District solo competition.
One of the very silly rules for Missouri All-District/All-State solo comp was the piece must be memorized. Even if Roger Bobo walked in there and played a solo from sheet music, he would receive a 2 rating at best, on a 1-5 scale 1 being highest, and not be allowed to advance to All-State competition.
Well, I was going to school in a town with a population a shade over 1,000. The metropolis was Lawson, Missouri. It was rare, to say the least, to have an All-State anything there, so I was a bit of a bragging point for the school band director. Well, at least on that point I was a bragging point. I won't mention the other stuff. Oh, yeah. Where was I? All-District, yes now I remember.
The band directors wife was an average amateur piano-ist. Or is that pianist? Who cares? Anyway, she had practiced diligently on the Vaughan Williams piano part, even though she had rarely, if ever, accompanied students in the past for her husband. We walk into the room for the All-District competition and I was sweatin' bullets. I have, what the American Medical Association would call, if they ever evaluated me, the planet's worst memory. I also don't always do well with nerves in do or die situations like high school competitions.
So here I was staring off into nowhere land without music and shaking like a leaf. I get to about the middle of the first page of the first movement, when my brain shuts down totally. I might as well have tried to flap my arms and fly at that moment, because the potential success rate of that would be considerably higher that trying to figure out what notes came next. The pianist kept playing, hoping that I would jump back on board the quickly sinking ship, but I was already dead. I picked up my horn and walked out of the room and back to my hard case, wanted to be careful with that horn now, and packed it up to leave.
That was the end of my attempts to publically perform memorized music.
The judge still gave me a score, even though I only got through half a page and threw the teenage fit when I stormed out. I believe he gave me a 2, if memory serves me correctly. Kinda wish I had just taken in the sheet music and played the darn thing out of protest. For a high schooler, I could play the thing pretty well, I thought at the time at least.
sean