Being woken by the telephone seems to be getting to be a habit this week. I got my wake-up call from Stephen at a quarter to nine this morning as I had to be at the Holy Redeemer Church hall a little earlier today than yesterday.
This morning was the coffee morning, and the orchestra were required to arrive by 10:15 so that we could be set up before the partakers of coffee arrived at 10:30. We even left our instrument cases backstage!
Much of the hall was set up with tables for four with a plate of assorted fancy biscuits in the centre of each table. Enough room was left at the front of the hall for a reduced string section, and the woodwind, brass and percussion occupied the stage. Once we started playing, volunteers circulated to serve tea and coffee to the audience.
The music was fairly light in nature and included items such as "Serenata" and "The Dam Busters", along with several medleys of well known songs from past years. We finished with an Elgar Pomp and Circumstance march, but not the one that was played so many times at the Commonwealth Games last week! The audience (which included a 102-year old man, who stood up and bowed when he was complimented on his unbroken attendance record at these coffee mornings) were appreciative and even sang along with some of the numbers.
Many people stayed on for a ploughman's lunch to celebrate the birthday of one of the violinists, but I came home for some more Linda McCartney sausages:-) I went into Bromley this afternoon and had a look round a few shops, although I managed to resist the £17.99 duvet cover! I find that a morning of music making with an evening of music making to follow is enough music for one day and I didn't even make a pretence of practising this afternoon.
This evening there was wind chamber music at Jerry and Mary's place. (The Mozart clarinet quintet was being played at somebody else's house, and I think the rest of the string players were having an evening off.) There were seven of us at Jerry and Mary's. We wanted to work out what we were going to offer as an item for tomorrow evening's "Party Pieces" at Joyce's place, and we also played through quite a bit of music just for enjoyment. One of the clarinettists knows a professor in Prague who has done a lot of wind arrangements (and I think some original stuff as well) and much of what we played came from Terry's collection, although we also played some Elgar quintets (written for two clarinets and no horn) which were originally going to be our "Party Piece". However, it was decided that some of the Prague professor's stuff would go down better.
Helen
Last Revised: 9th August, 2002.