The Big Zerp Challenge

Its one thing to work on an orchestral excerpt.
Its another thing to take an audition playing that excerpt.
Its ANOTHER thing to perform that excerpt in concert.
...but taking that excerpt on tour?

It can't get any worse than that-
wait, yes it can.

Taking you FEAR excerpt on tour.

Most mortal orchestral musicians have what they call their "fear excerpt". The excerpt on the list that frightens, troubles, vexes, ot just plain drives you batty! Mine had a name: William Tell.

For trombonists, the overture to William Tell by Rossini means a frenetic run of 8th notes that starts off after a long note and seems quite unrelentless. I never thought I had the best technique for fast tonguing, and this zerp was always a great challenge. Many a time, it was just the thing a committee needed to hear to know they didn't need to hear anymore from me.

So when my band listed the pieces for our Spring tour, and I saw it at the top of the list, a large sigh emitted from down below that was all but relaxing. You know that feeling once you've assembled all your tax information on the table, reciepts spilling all over, and you need to catch your breath before beginning. Yeah, a teeny bit like that.

Being in the middle of said tour, as I type, we've now performed it 4 times with probably 4 more to go. As a touring ensemble continues on from city to city, the music tends to chage with familiarity and confidence, both from the musicians as well as the conductor.

William Tell begins with a lovely serene moment for the cellos for about 3-4 minutes. Once that cadences, the storm scene begins. Its the sound of this new tempo that tells the trombones have in store for them.

At last night's show, the conductor must have been feeling quite good. As soon as it began, my colleague next to me and I just looked at each other and sighed, chuckled and gulped all at the same time.  The printed music has a metronome marking of half note = 108.  That means in a 60 second period there will be 108 beats.  On my best audition day, I can play Will Tell at 104.  It may not seem like much to most, but those 4 beats are a huge difference, especially to a tongue already pushed to its limits.  On this night, our conductor was going for, easily, 116-120.  If Sousa were there, he'd think it was a march!

So what do you do?  Thankfully, when you are playing behind (physically, not musically) the ensemble, you can change what you spent 15 years training yourself to do.  You breathe in the wrong spots, you leave a note out, you even change your tonguing plan, going from single to double.  If you placed a single mic on me, and removed the sound of the rest of the band, a la Linda McCartney, that is what you might get...Linda McCartney.  No guarantees of anything.

BUT, despite this knowledge, I still do what I can to make the best ensemble presentation on this legendary piece.  Whether I did it or not, well, you need to poll the good folks of New England I performed it for.  They seemed to like it.  

As Sid Caesar said on a guest spot of "Mad About You"... "Its a 'was'."

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The musical selections that were performed magnificently during this blogs writing was:

Phased by the Storm - Nektar  - "After the Storm"
More Than This - Peter Gabriel - "Up"
Another World - Joe Jackson   - "Summer in the City"
A Duet for Our Time - Of Beauty (Eric Ewazen) - New Trombone Collective - "New"
Symphony X - Accolade II - "The Odyssey"

Symphony #1 III. Allegro comodo - San Francisco Symphony "Nielsen Syphonies #1 & 6"

Intermission Riff - Pete Rugolo - "10 Trombones Like 2 Pianos"