Thacher Montessori, in the gym

In attendance:  Victor, Chris, Brad, Rick, Dev, Glenn

The meeting opens with us sitting in a circle.  At Victor's invitation, Dev takes the lead, giving an account of the recent course that was held earlier this month near Cuernevaca, Mexico, hosted by the Contemporary Guitar Ensemble.  Lots of good information, and plenty to look forward to in the coming months and years.

This leads quite naturally into a discussion of the upcoming special project (Dev noticeably self-corrected after calling it a course) here in May with the Orchestra.  As of this meeting, the first performance of the Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists East Coast Tour 2013 will be held in precisely three months, not far from the last GCNE performance series held at Harvard-Epworth.  The middle now seems to be past, and most all agree that time has noticeably accelerated.  A fair amount of practical work stands in front of us, in addition to the guitar-and-otherwise work.

As requested by Sandra, Dev runs the team through an exercise; this is to sort of bring us in sync with some work we got from her back in December, and is also related to the work of the Orchestra.  Following this, we take it up in an ambulatory fashion, attempting to run it faster and faster.  Some interesting observations.

Once we've run through this exercise to a logical sort of conclusion for the night, Victor walks over, kills the lights, and gives the "When ready, begin while ambulating in the dark" command.  Some of the more creative improvising this Circle has engaged with:  to the scribe's ears, this is some of the most musical playing he's heard in a while.  Lotsa juice.

A short break.

Back in the circle, Dev gives a formal introduction of the First Secondary, and some of the variations RF presented with it.

A final G Major circulation/improvisation to end the night.

Small group at Brad's Apartment

In attendance:  Chris, Brad.

With limited crew, there isn't a wide breadth of material to fall back on, but we do what we can.

- At Chris's prompting, Brad shows him a warm up for the hands that he's been using for a couple of months.
- Chris demonstrates some more of the small detail work that he's been looking at; some very particular phrasing in a few bars of the C Major Cello Prelude.  This works into some discussion of classical notation, personal interpretation, how daring one can be, etc.
- A bit of work with some of the rhythmic work we'd done two weeks back; Brad makes an over-suggestion.
- Short break
- A bit of repertoire work:  Where's the Nurse gets a run.  Chris notes that he really likes to hear the piece lay back hard on the downbeat of the bar (a heavy "one").  With a bit of explanation, we give this a try, and find that it really brings out the sexiness of the piece, for lack of a better term.  Also, a bit of attention to the lead outro arpeggios for Brad, with another note from Chris about the methodic approach.
- Brad mentions he's been working with overplaying the accents in Askesis, as well as addressing a very specific instruction from Victor about how to play the "many bugs" part.  We run the bass part from top to bottom, and then focus on a few spots where Chris knows the lead.  Chris's comment is that it really brings out the playfulness of the music, in contrast to the more constant attack that is commonly associated with Crafty music.
- A couple runs of Growing Circle; the second time, Brad asks Chris to overplay the dynamics (or really to just play louder).  Chris's dead strings don't make this easy for him.

With that, we call it a night.