Post-concert high/slump

I’m tired. Beat. Exhausted. And glad that I’m finally done with my concerts. Phew.

I don’t know why it consumes my life thus, but for the past few weeks, I feel like I’ve put my life on hold to focus on this music. Now I’m glad to be done with it all and have my life back again.

Since we never get reviewed, I’ve decided to post my own review/thoughts of the concert. (I mean, heck, it’s my blog, so I should be able to do what I want.)

I am always amazed at how well our concerts come together. Yes, we made some mistakes. I came in at the wrong time on some piece. We lost pitch on some of the long a capella pieces. The accompanist played more than a few wrong notes. But overall, I thought we did quite well.

We were a galaxy away from where we were just six days ago, when we sounded, um, very insecure in too many spots. However, in the few days that passed between our last rehearsal and our concerts, it sounded like we improved 500 percent.

I did not bother pitching this concert too hard to the press or to reviewers—nor did I really tell my friends about it. I thought we had a lot of cool ideas for the concert, but to be totally honest, I wasn’t sure how the execution would go. Even as late as two days ago, I wasn’t sure how it would all turn out.

First, there was the issue of the music. One piece, as I mentioned earlier, sounded like mush. Then there was another piece that sounded like Handel, but for Handelian music, I prefer to just listen to/sing the original thing.

Then there was the issue of type of music. Here we are a hoity toity choir that usually sings contemporary classical music, and for this program, we sang pieces about rabbits and skunks and mickey mouse.

Then there were my own inadequacies. I’d say three-quarters or more of the choir has done two-thirds or more of the pieces in the program. I was not one of those people. We were left mostly to our own devices to learn these pieces and plink out these notes that had a zillion bizarre accidentals in ridiculous keys that are not violin-friendly. One piece in particular has been the bane of my existence for the past two months. I did not have this piece completely learned until a week ago. In fact, this was going to be my if-I-don’t-learn-this-piece-I-will-opt-out-of-singing-in-the-second -half limiting reagent of a piece.

In spite of all of these potential challenges, I thought we put on a good show. The audience seemed to like the lightheartedness and humor in the program. I still wasn’t in love with most of these pieces, but I did tolerate them enough to enjoy performing them.

We had a decent turnout today, but a dismal one yesterday—maybe 50 people tops? Which means we don’t break even on concerts (since the space rental is probably $1K, the parking attendants we had to hire was $200, and we had a stage manager that cost several hundred dollars. Not to mention, paying an instrumentalist. 50 people times $20 per ticket is barely $1000.)

We did some pretty beautiful music-making. Quite frankly, as much as I would love a larger audience, if it weren’t for the financial sustainability aspect, I wouldn’t care so much about a dismal turnout. Music is music regardless of whether 5 or 500 people are in the audience. It is just as beautiful to make and just as powerful of an experience.

I had the opportunity to speak with some new audience members after the concert. Granted, it’s not like they would ever admit it if they thought the concert was lousy, but a few of them gushed about how great we sounded and said that it was a “crime” to have this low of an audience turnout after how much work we “must’ve” put into the program. It is people like this who make me smile regardless of turnout.

On the other hand, it is quite disappointing to have so many people work so hard on the music and not have people appreciate the music. For many of us, the concert repertoire takes over our life for the two months preceding the concert.

And after almost every concert, I grapple with this—was it worth it? All of that memorization? The hours put into it that I could be putting into something far more productive? Do I derive enough fulfillment/gratification from this to warrant all of this? I can’t objectively answer that right now, since I’m on a post-concert high.