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Nov. 17th, 2020 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnSunday was E's orchestra concert. It was all virtual -- they did the thing where all the musicians sent in a video and then they put them all together. There are actually three youth orchestras associated with our symphony --there's the youngest beginner orchestra, the middle orchestra (the one E is in) with string ensemble (20 kids) and wind ensemble (10 kids) (usually they play together, but for this they split up and the wind ensemble did its own wind chamber music), and then the high-school-age youth orchestra, which has > 50 kids. Each group did one or two songs. E's group had some minor but noticeable issues with video synchronization, but I thought the lack of synchrony gave it realism ;) The high school youth orchestra did something I hadn't seen before (perhaps it's edited out of professional-ish videos) and which I thought was brilliant -- they clapped twice at the beginning, which I assume set up the synchronization point, and indeed the synchronization was very good.
I started tearing up when I noticed that the high-school percussionist was wearing a mask and realized he was the only one who couldn't record at home, as of course he had to do it in a place that had the percussion instruments. This kid, going to all this trouble to safely play a timpani in a big church by himself. (And actually he played all four percussion parts -- at first I thought there were four percussionists, but no, there was one kid doing all the parts. In more normal years past they brought in adult ringers.)
The thing is. Musicians will make music. That was a lot of work and a lot of trouble taken by a lot of people (and some work and trouble taken by a lot more people -- I won't say it was hard, but it also wasn't entirely trivial to set up and record E at home (she was playing with a previously recorded track on headphones while being recorded herself), and imagine that not-entirely-trivial-effort times all the orchestral musicians and parents!), and it happened just so they could make a bit of perfectly imperfect music sort-of-together for a few minutes. It is a testament to the sheer obstinate stubbornness of human beings, that we won't let something as silly as a pandemic and isolation stop us.
Lately I've been very skeptical and very cynical about human beings, but you know what? Sometimes human beings are awesome.
(E: "Wow, it sounds so different with the violins!" Hee, spoken like a true violist. She's the best. But it really is true -- the violas play this little deebeedeebeedee motif while there's this ~whole melody thing~ going on with the violins that we never heard until the concert!)
I started tearing up when I noticed that the high-school percussionist was wearing a mask and realized he was the only one who couldn't record at home, as of course he had to do it in a place that had the percussion instruments. This kid, going to all this trouble to safely play a timpani in a big church by himself. (And actually he played all four percussion parts -- at first I thought there were four percussionists, but no, there was one kid doing all the parts. In more normal years past they brought in adult ringers.)
The thing is. Musicians will make music. That was a lot of work and a lot of trouble taken by a lot of people (and some work and trouble taken by a lot more people -- I won't say it was hard, but it also wasn't entirely trivial to set up and record E at home (she was playing with a previously recorded track on headphones while being recorded herself), and imagine that not-entirely-trivial-effort times all the orchestral musicians and parents!), and it happened just so they could make a bit of perfectly imperfect music sort-of-together for a few minutes. It is a testament to the sheer obstinate stubbornness of human beings, that we won't let something as silly as a pandemic and isolation stop us.
Lately I've been very skeptical and very cynical about human beings, but you know what? Sometimes human beings are awesome.
(E: "Wow, it sounds so different with the violins!" Hee, spoken like a true violist. She's the best. But it really is true -- the violas play this little deebeedeebeedee motif while there's this ~whole melody thing~ going on with the violins that we never heard until the concert!)
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Date: 2020-11-18 07:59 am (UTC)(I've watched so many of these vids of musicians playing together by remote now, and every time it takes my breath away.)
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Date: 2020-11-18 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-18 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-21 05:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-18 05:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-21 05:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-18 08:29 pm (UTC)Aww! (When O was playing with the second violins, it was rather like that when we'd go to his concerts, like, oh, THAT'S what the rest of it sounds like XD)
His high school orchestra has a tradition of going over to the elementary school next door and playing for their Halloween costume parade, and this year the orchestra teacher did the thing by having them record themselves in their homes (L definitely complained about all the extra hours of violin necessary for O to get an uninterrupted recording with no random background noises) and take pictures of their instruments "dressed up" in Halloween costumes. I haven't seen the result, but I really want to -- and it's so great that she did all the extra work to coordinate that and put it together.
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Date: 2020-11-21 05:33 am (UTC)(L definitely complained about all the extra hours of violin necessary for O to get an uninterrupted recording with no random background noises)
Yeah, this is the part where it was quite nontrivial -- E's pieces were super short, but even so it wasn't trivial to get an uninterrupted recording that didn't have something weird about it :)
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Date: 2020-11-19 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-21 05:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-21 03:43 pm (UTC)<3333
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Date: 2020-11-21 05:59 pm (UTC)