Bass Dojo

Before Metallica, before Led Zepplin, there was Igor Stravinsky. We played our first of two concerts with the Rite of Spring this evening. It was at a concert hall 2 hours away by bus, and everyone was feeling tired, exhausted, and negative in general. But the piece is so amazing, that everyone found the last bit of energy that they had, and we put on a good show, in my opinion. (If you ask someone else, they may argue otherwise.) This concert cycle has been questionable. Morale has been low for number of reasons. The conductor didn't really know how to deal with the issues, I think, because most of his experience comes from high level professional orchestras. Also, some of the pieces, by composers who shall remain nameless, were garbage. And today, we took a bus ride after lunch that took longer than expected, and we ended up rehearsing the concert program until 20 minutes before the show was scheduled to begin. Wherever you are, and whoever you are, that's just now how it's done. But when we walked out there to play the Rite, we knew this piece had everything we needed. As far as the bass part, it's straight up heavy metal, head banging music. Aside from us, enough of the orchestra wanted to play this piece well. The attitude is 99% of the performance, and tonight was a prime example. And one the bus ride back, we got crazy. There was no radio, so we made our own music, banging on the walls of the bus, spittin' rhymes, and singing. In Japan, it's always Suntori time... Unfortunately, not everyone on the bus was pleased with our roughtiness. (sp?) Tomorrow morning, I'm sleeping in, and we have an afternoon concert, and then a day off.

Yesterday, everyone's chamber music group performed at different places in and around Sapporo. We played at a concert hall in Higashi. I don't really know where it was, but it was pretty fun. My chamber music group decided to switch the piece we were playing on Wednesday, only to perform it yesterday (Friday). But it all worked out well. We got to the venue early, did a sound check, and had 3 hours of down time. I went to the Sapporo beer factory, which is no longer operational, to my great sadness. But, across the street was a mall (Japanese malls put our's to shame) with a Sega store inside, with an arcade too. I spent 200 yennies to play what I though was a racing game. It had a mock up of a car, with dashboard, mirrors, seat belt, turn signals, you know what I mean. Well, because it was all in Japanese, I didn't realize that it was just a driving simulator. You're supposed to drive around like a normal driver, and obey traffic laws, wear your seatbelt, and use your turn signal, etc... Once the game started, I floored it, hit a pedestrian, and got arrested. My 200 yennies were gone. Ce la vie...