Posted by ken k on September 29, 2001 at 21:22:58:
Howdy fellow tubenetters,
My brass quintet (well its not MY quintet, but you know what I mean) plays a piece by Horovitz called The Music Hall Suite." It is a five movement work with each movement representing a different act in a turn-of-the-(previous)-century music hall or vaudeville-type show. The movements are: 1. Soubrette's Song (Soubrette being a diva of sorts) 2. Trick cyclists 3. Adagio Team 4. Soft Shoe Shuffle 5. Les Girls! Whenever we would play this I would envsision the acts or dances going on around us. Well, last spring I made a recording of the piece and gave it to my daughter's ballet theatre director to see what she thought and she loved it! We just performed the piece tonight complete with ballet dancers (no, not belly dancers.). We also played a few other numbers between the different numbers that the ballet troupe danced. She got funding from the local music foundation to pay our salaries. For all you moms and dads who have sat through 3 hour dance recitals this was nothing like that. This ballet academy is very fine. They do a major production of the Nutcracker every Dec. with the symphony in town and the girls are amazing. It hurts just to watch them when they go on pointe!
Anyway the reason I thought I would share this was not to pat myself on the back, but rather to get your creative juices flowing. You can't always just sit around and expect the gigs to come to you. Sometimes you have to go out and make you own work. This was one successful idea. I'm sure there are many others out there. Let's share some ideas and help each other get some new gigs.
ken k