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09/02/2006
Glutton for Punishment
OK, I officially need to learn to say no even when people are giving me Bambi eyes. This summer, I played a concert with Sinfonia Ottawa, which actually went quite well. We played things like Mozart, W.F. Bach, Graupner... normal, sane stuff. No Bartok this time, thank goodness.
However, a number of the people from Sinfonia are from another community orchestra, who apparently lost their principal cellist this summer, so they're looking for a new one. In general, principal cellists even of community orchestras tend to be professional musicians, so imagine my surprise when they asked me if I wanted to do it. Part of me thought, no way, are you kidding? The other part of me though, was thinking, hey this would be an interesting challenge. Eventually, I told them that if they were really, terribly, utterly desperate, I would do it.
Now, I'm wishing I'd just said no! Yesterday, they got back to me and said, great! And by the way, the conductor wants to hear you play so can you have a piece ready to play for the conductor at the next rehearsal? (= in 4 days from now.) Ack!! This is a reasonable request, but I wish I'd known about it just a little earlier so I could have either started preparing earlier, or had a better reason to say No. :-)
The good news I guess is that in a strange way it's a win-win situation. Either the audition goes well, or if it doesn't I'm off the hook as if I'd said no in the first place! The bad news is that the nerves have already set in, which isn't fun.
Oh, I've got to stop getting myself into these situations...
13:10 Posted in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this