Wow, it's been a long time since I've blogged. Felt like getting at it again. Tomorrow I have a debut show of my own quintet at The Royal Room. We did one 3 song show before with a different pianist, but this time it's a full 8-tunes show. After B'shnorkestra, I realized that nothing makes me happier than writing music and bringing people together to play it. I decided that I wanted to start a smaller group with piano, because piano would let me do things compositionally that I could not with Reptet or B'shnorkestra. And so it has, I think the music came out differently. I did get the same exhilarating rush that I did for B'shnorkestra by writing a lot of music all at once. Same nerves on presenting something under my own name. It's been a blast working with these other four musicians. We laugh a lot and have a few antics planned for the show. Since I am so awful with titles I decided to compose another suite. This one is dedicated to Mount Saint Helens, because she blew up 31 years ago on this date. Also two songs dedicated to the insane amount of online Scrabble games I play with my dad.
As soon as this show is over tomorrow I will be prepping very hard for a 7 day B'shnorkestra intensive which involves long rehearsals, 3 days recording at Bear Creek Studio, and a show at the Royal Room. But I can't quite think about that until at least Saturday.
B'shBLOGestra: words, thoughts, jokes & spectacles from Samantha Boshnack...
Showing posts with label B'shnorkestra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label B'shnorkestra. Show all posts
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Post-B'shnorkestra come down
Wow. Here I am post premieres. These shows were unlike anything I could have imagined.
Thursday's show came after three days of rehearsals and I was feeling so good. We had a good turnout and a super enthusiastic crowd. The focus and energy on stage was incredible. I felt like we really nailed the music better than I could have ever imagined. I mean, we had never performed these 8 songs together before, something had to go wrong right? But, no. These musicians gave it their all and the show went off without a hitch. I find out after the show that the one hitch that happened was a computer glitch. A glitch which meant that the show did not get recorded. This lives up to the musician lore out there which says that the best shows do not get recorded. I was dissapointed but I was on such a high from the show that it didn't get me down. I counted my lucky stars that I had the foresight to schedule two shows in order to get a recording instead of one.
Saturday's show came after a day off. It was really exciting to see and hear very positive responses from audience members from Thursday. But for some reason, it made me more nervous. I can't explain it. I learned that a debut show feels really different than the second show. Expectation makes things different.
And then, the craziest thing happened. I was in the green room 15 minutes before the show was supposed to start and had my horn on my arm. I reached to take down a plastic chair to sit on and bumped my horn. Background info on me; I'm a klutz. I bang my horn into things all of the time. Luckily I play an instrument that is tough and I have never had any problems because of it. This night, however was different. All of the sudden the third valve wouldn't move anymore. I still can't figure out how it happened. Everyone rushed around, grabbing trumpet players from the audience and calling others. One trumpet player showed up with an extra student horn that he had, and Chris Credit ran to my house to get my flugelhorn. I also had a student in the audience who had her horn. We had to start the show about 35 minutes late and I had to play the show on a student horn plus my flugelhorn. We all tried to see the good in this. It did bring the band together in a very special way and I have to say it knocked the nerves right out of me. I did feel sad however not to have been able to play my horn and have my sound. I also felt guilty for having made the audience wait.
The band played great once again, there were incredible moments and the music went off very well. There were some little mistakes, but the energy was fierce. We had an even larger crowd than on Thursday. So many musicians came to both shows, I have never felt so supported by the Seattle music scene. But beyond musicians there was a diverse audience from young to old.
Since the shows I have been trying to process and determine the next step. Leading up to this, I really didn't know what this would lead to. I feel very strongly now that I need to record these 8 songs in a studio and get the best recording possible. I also know that the band will play again. I am working on booking gigs at schools in conjunction with another gig to make it work financially.
I am really incredibly grateful to have had such a great premiere experience. The feeling I had on stage was unlike anything I had felt before, and I loved it. I had spent so much time leading up these shows imagining worse case scenarios; I wouldn't have the music written in time, we wouldn't get enough rehearsals, we wouldn't learn the music well enough to pull it off, only four people would show up, and so on and so forth. It's crazy that the two things that went wrong were both things that I never could have imagined.
I am so thankful to so many people who made this show possible - my great circle of family and friends who supported me through it all, the musicians, Beth Fleenor, Oliva Taguinod, Arie Pytel, Francisca Garcia, Mell Dettmer, Paurl Walsh, Erica Langley, Charles Atwell, Brianna Atwell, Brad Hebert, and Kirk Nordenstrom.
Thursday's show came after three days of rehearsals and I was feeling so good. We had a good turnout and a super enthusiastic crowd. The focus and energy on stage was incredible. I felt like we really nailed the music better than I could have ever imagined. I mean, we had never performed these 8 songs together before, something had to go wrong right? But, no. These musicians gave it their all and the show went off without a hitch. I find out after the show that the one hitch that happened was a computer glitch. A glitch which meant that the show did not get recorded. This lives up to the musician lore out there which says that the best shows do not get recorded. I was dissapointed but I was on such a high from the show that it didn't get me down. I counted my lucky stars that I had the foresight to schedule two shows in order to get a recording instead of one.
Saturday's show came after a day off. It was really exciting to see and hear very positive responses from audience members from Thursday. But for some reason, it made me more nervous. I can't explain it. I learned that a debut show feels really different than the second show. Expectation makes things different.
And then, the craziest thing happened. I was in the green room 15 minutes before the show was supposed to start and had my horn on my arm. I reached to take down a plastic chair to sit on and bumped my horn. Background info on me; I'm a klutz. I bang my horn into things all of the time. Luckily I play an instrument that is tough and I have never had any problems because of it. This night, however was different. All of the sudden the third valve wouldn't move anymore. I still can't figure out how it happened. Everyone rushed around, grabbing trumpet players from the audience and calling others. One trumpet player showed up with an extra student horn that he had, and Chris Credit ran to my house to get my flugelhorn. I also had a student in the audience who had her horn. We had to start the show about 35 minutes late and I had to play the show on a student horn plus my flugelhorn. We all tried to see the good in this. It did bring the band together in a very special way and I have to say it knocked the nerves right out of me. I did feel sad however not to have been able to play my horn and have my sound. I also felt guilty for having made the audience wait.
The band played great once again, there were incredible moments and the music went off very well. There were some little mistakes, but the energy was fierce. We had an even larger crowd than on Thursday. So many musicians came to both shows, I have never felt so supported by the Seattle music scene. But beyond musicians there was a diverse audience from young to old.
Since the shows I have been trying to process and determine the next step. Leading up to this, I really didn't know what this would lead to. I feel very strongly now that I need to record these 8 songs in a studio and get the best recording possible. I also know that the band will play again. I am working on booking gigs at schools in conjunction with another gig to make it work financially.
I am really incredibly grateful to have had such a great premiere experience. The feeling I had on stage was unlike anything I had felt before, and I loved it. I had spent so much time leading up these shows imagining worse case scenarios; I wouldn't have the music written in time, we wouldn't get enough rehearsals, we wouldn't learn the music well enough to pull it off, only four people would show up, and so on and so forth. It's crazy that the two things that went wrong were both things that I never could have imagined.
I am so thankful to so many people who made this show possible - my great circle of family and friends who supported me through it all, the musicians, Beth Fleenor, Oliva Taguinod, Arie Pytel, Francisca Garcia, Mell Dettmer, Paurl Walsh, Erica Langley, Charles Atwell, Brianna Atwell, Brad Hebert, and Kirk Nordenstrom.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Opening Night!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYDtThD60pE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oWokSkZaQI
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Rehearsals in full swing
We have been B'shnorking a whole lot over here on Capitol Hill. Me and these 11 awesome musicians have been working really hard on the new pieces. I must say its a lot of music, but we are getting it. It's been a mix of detailed work on composed parts combined with jamming on sections to get the grooves worked out. It's really coming together quite nicely. Not to mention there is a really nice vibe in the rehearsals because on top of being great musicians these are all nice people that are fun to spend time with. My chronic hiccup squawk showed up at rehearsal yesterday to crack up cellist Maria.
Tomorrow we have our first rehearsal with Lalo, I'm really looking forward to adding him to the mix and having three percussionists on three tunes.
When not in rehearsal, I have been spending many hours listening to these rehearsals and practicing my parts and conducting. It's pretty exciting, although I wish I could stop getting quite so excited so that I could sleep at night.
Tomorrow we have our first rehearsal with Lalo, I'm really looking forward to adding him to the mix and having three percussionists on three tunes.
When not in rehearsal, I have been spending many hours listening to these rehearsals and practicing my parts and conducting. It's pretty exciting, although I wish I could stop getting quite so excited so that I could sleep at night.
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