HSO (http://www.heartlandsymphony.org/season.html) concerts were last night and this afternoon. Both were very well-received...even the normally very reserved (think stereotypical Norwegian bachelor farmers) Little Falls crowd gave us a standing ovation. I'm guessing a good part of that was due to our guest artist, cowboy poet Dianne Tribbit. She was amazing - even though I couldn't hear most of her poetry because we were playing at the same time.
We (the viola section, plus our honorary violist from the horn section) surprised the conductor this afternoon. He had made a comment in Thursday night's rehearsal that the viola section has the solo in "Saturday Night Waltz" because we're kind of like "wallflowers that are just starting to blossom" and that we need to play with more passion. I don't remember exactly how he put it, but he mentioned that we should give the impression that we were sitting in front of the fireplace on a bearskin rug, with flowers and glasses of wine. During the break in the rehearsal, the section decided that we should do something about/with/to his suggestion. Well...one of the kids had a bearskin rug that he was wearing last week during the Homecoming festivities. I mentioned that, and the idea blossomed... I borrowed the bearskin, the horn player brought wine glasses, another of the violists brought some ginger ale (we play in high school auditoriums, so we couldn't bring real wine in...). When I got to the dress rehearsal today, I put the bear's head on the podium, with the rest of it draped back toward our section. The wine glasses (with ginger ale) went on the podium, just ahead of the bear's nose. A few of the orchestra members chuckled as they noticed what we were doing...and then the conductor walked right past once without even noticing! The orch manager came toward the podium to give us a couple of announcements, saw the bear, and started laughing. Then the director saw it...and was completely stunned. He finally asked, "Whose idea was this?" And of course, my answer was: "Yours!" We all had a good laugh, and then the bear and glasses disappeared off into the wings for the publicity picture. And then...as the photographer was starting to work her way back down, the director said, "Wait!" and ran off to the wings. He came back with the bear and one of the wine glasses, and sat in front of the orch for another picture...wearing the bear draped over his head and shoulders.
Needless to say, the tension was pretty well gone by this point, because we were all too busy laughing to feel stressed.
Next major event on the calendar: HS concert on Tuesday...
And no school on Thursday or Friday!
Time to sleep late and then get all the miscellaneous moving-in stuff done that still hasn't gotten wrapped up. (Couple of boxes of decoration-type stuff to empty, then lots of boxes to store.)
