Double Bass Russian Christmas Music

[QweziRider]

Accompanying the cor anglais while my adrenaline was crashing after the bass solo proved to be difficult for me.

When it's your wife you're accompanying there...nah, no pressure.

 

[Wasnex]

I’m sorry you had such a bad experience. My brain occasionally plays metric tricks on me as well. Things like listening to something that’s in three and feeling it in four. It has occasionally happened during things like rhythmic dictation tests and the like.

Personally, my biggest problem when playing Russian Christmas Music was the soft exposed arco sections after the solo. Accompanying the cor anglais while my adrenaline was crashing after the bass solo proved to be difficult for me. I wound up getting a bit of shaky bow there. You can year it on the recording, and it’s embarrassing. However I think the good outweighed the bad, and my peers seemed to agree.

There were lots of extenuating circumstances that led to that situation. Some last minute changes had to be made to provide some audio support Mr Begian requested, and the organization had hired an incompetent audio tech, so I was asked to take care of it. This prevented me from setting up my gear and getting settled. I think this may have been the first, or one of the first rehearsals I actually amplified my string bass in concert band.

The first piece we went into was Russian Christmas Music. I had just finished taking care of Mr Begian's audio request and gotten my string bass setup when it was time to play the solo section. Previously we had rehearsed the part and the tubas had doubled the part, but Mr Begian wanted just string bass on the part. Nice surprise when you are already stressed and filled with adrenaline.

Lastly I had never played the line with a conductor who wanted to vary to time so drastically.

Mr Begian was a legend for a good reason. But if you weren't up to his standards, he was the type that would destroy you publicly, and that is pretty much what he did to me. For the record I had not even completed an associates in music performance when this occurred.

On the plus side: I had a fairly long career and a lot of great experiences to counter balance this, so I can't really complain too much. This was just something that happened early in my career that I haven't thought about for a long, long time.

 

[QweziRider]

But if you weren't up to his standards, he was the type that would destroy you publicly, and that is pretty much what he did to me.

Considering all you had to take care of prior, that's not cool.

 

[QweziRider]

Got through two performances relatively unscathed. Sunday's concert was definitely the better of the two. Finally fun!