Triad, Ho!

I have great faith in fools — self-confidence my friends will call it.

— Edgar Allan Poe

Only this morning do I realize that these present Triad concerts are the first time I shall appear before the public in as many as four musical capacities – as choral singer, clarinetist (for my Mystic Trumpeter), conductor (of love is the every only god by Michael Veloso), and of course as composer.

The Triad rehearsal last night was excellent, and Sudie Marcuse & I had a highly productive Mystic Trumpeter rehearsal before.  The general rehearsal began with running the whole program, in order, with all the solo voice items in their place.  It Might Happen Today makes a gratifyingly strong impression, though we still need to tighten a couple of joints.  And my Mystic Trumpeter went very nicely, too.

The big takeaway from the run-through was:  although the estimate for the program was 65 minutes of music total, our timekeeper made it out at ... 85 minutes last night.  Which is tiresomely long, for a program of all new music.  (The plan was 65 minutes of music, with an intermission;  85 minutes plus an intermission is practically an invitation to riot.)  So the warm request was generally extended to all the solo acts, to trim their act slightly (a number of us are doing a set of three or four songs).

As The Mystic Trumpeter is a 20-minute setting, we are already doing an abridgement.  However, we are team players – this is a collective! – and would not presume to seek to exempt ourselves from the pruner’s hook.  And I think I have found a reasonably musical solution to shorten our abbreviation even further.