1-28-07 art loft

MB, David, Martin, Glenn and Victor

David and MB worked with Victor on the new circulation piece, and spent a couple of minutes on Victor's new piece. Martin and Glenn arrived and we worked full on on Victor's circulation piece for about an hour and half, almost (well, nearly almost...) working it through from start to finish. we will try to have this for our appearance at the old cambridge baptist church on march 18. for my part it was interesting to see the quantity of frustration vented into the group, but equally moving was the persistence to learn. we worked a moment on the A section of Victor's new piece, with time taken to learn the fast lead line. we worked on third relation twice through, with some attention given to heavyhandedness the second time. we ran invention 1 which seemed to retain the hard work we put in last week and decided to try to start from this place with it next week. afterwards martin and victor stayed behind to work a bit more on third relation.

sunday jan 21 art studio south end

MB, Glenn, David and Victor.

watched a bit of the caravan show video documentation. but few observations were made.

a long session of embroidery, with the aim for me of having the group get more accustomed to making choices quickly from listening to the whole. at one point i asked people to remember what they were doing, and tried to help mary beth with an additional alternation of her bass line. but having done that we were unable to accurately resume the other voices.

we worked on the first 8 bars of third relation, after first playing the piece. we worked with alternating dropping out for 4 beats and resuming playing. criculating on open a with complete efficiency. circulating on the opening note of 3rd relation with complete efficiency, circulating 1st 2 and 1st 4 note sets of 3rd relation with complete efficiency, adding a focus of keeping the notes even. playing the 1st eight bars with complete evenness, stopping after compentency in this was established and resuming off a count with the exact same competency. we did more of passing dropping out for 4 bars, and then played the piece. there was some uneveness in the picking the second two beats of the A min section observed, but otherwise the piece was much improved.

we worked on the invention #1 circulation. we worked on picking from a physical attitude of readyness in the right hand. we worked on clicking 16th notes as we went. we worked on listening to the note just before and just after, looking at where the pulse sits in relation to the melody, where it sits in relation to our note, and holding our notes long enough.

we talked some about the upcoming ocbc show

we'll meet at 7:30 next week.

Sunday January 14th

Location: Jane's studio, South Boston
Attendees: Martin, MB, Glenn, David, Victor

First meeting of 2007, after about a month hiatus.

Martin was going to be a bit late arriving. MB, Glenn and David set up the speakers so we could play plugged in. We watched a recording of our gig at Bridge's school, especially the awful Embroidery, which just got worse and worse as it went along. Victor told us to watch for our startle reflexes. Other interesting moments throughout the other pieces. Bach piece had a lot of good moments. Martin arrived, and we re-watched the Embroidery. Victor then put on the Crossroads DVD from Odaiko New England as an example of the type of performance we should be striving for. Discussion about how to arrive at that point. Discussion about future directions with the circle. The need to apply attention more constantly to ourselves. How our interaction with Victor has changed since the early days, and how we might need to recapture some of the early feel as a way to have the necessary attention. Some repertoire work on Growing Circle, Askesis and the Invention. For Askesis, make sure we are not "swinging" the unison section.

DBK

Note: Posting backdated to show up in proper order.