1st Zephyr Rehearsal

Last night I led my first rehearsal as the new stand-in conductor for the Zephyr Brass Choir. I have to admit that going in to it I was really anxious, largely due to my fear that my procrastination in arranging things for the group was going to lead to having no music to rehearse. In fact, I was so worried about this that I had at least two or three bad dreams about conducting!

Contrary to my fears though, the rehearsal went smoothly for its two hour length, and we had plenty of music to rehearse, including one of the ensemble member's four movement piece based on the four elements and a brass arrangement they already had of the opening from Also Sprach Zarathustra. Although I hadn't conducted an ensemble in over a year, I think I did decently enough, especially considering I was sight-reading the scores (another reason I was anxious going in).

We spent the rest of the rehearsal listening to clips of twelve pieces I had compiled for possible arrangement for the group, most of which were minimalist. The idea was to give the group (which had 13 members present yesterday) a chance to give a 'yes' or 'no' to my proposed pieces for our niche concert, partly to give them a say in the whole matter and partly to inform me how much I might be imposing my will on them were they to reject most it. Fortunately, it turned out that they liked nine of the twelve tracks I played for them, which is a far more positive reaction than I had expected.

So, my task for next week is to get at least one of these pieces arranged for the group for rehearsal, and hopefully I'll be able to add at least one new piece to this list every week until we've got it all covered. Should be a lot of hard work, but I think it'll be worth it, especially after having worked with the group now, seeing how reasonable it could be to arrange for them.