Victor, Brad, Chris, Rick, Dev
Beginning with one-on-one detail work, with Victor leading and others offering contributions. The "details" are aspects of our individual playing that we have the freedom to make choices about, but for whatever reason, don't; they simply "happen"--for instance, hearing "phrasing" of groups of notes, or using the range of timbre on a given instrument, or overlooking technically challenging parts where mistakes regularly occur. Having this freedom, Victor says, is much more desirable than a pointillistic approach to detail, because musical decisions require an ongoing sense of adjustment to the needs of the moment. We play with these ideas for a little while before Dev arrives.
We play Eye of the Needle, followed by a few comments regarding arrangement and tuning. This segues into our first rehearsal of BWV 846 for four guitars. The small team work through the first nine bars of the fugue, repeating and making small personal adjustments. Eventually, the music begins to arrive at relative coherence, and an additional section for rehearsal is decided upon for next week (up to the '1' o bar 14); whereupon, the preceding prelude with five guitars is given a truncated recital, and deemed "possible" for performance.
The final bit of guitar work for the meeting is a couple play-throughs of Morning Has Broken, without and with written aids. This one has a little rust and there are gaffs from all corners, but the players know their homework. There is some closing discussion of booking performances for April, how the team might about it in a way which makes both practical sense and is in alignment with the aim of the project, opening acts, press, etc., before the minute-keeper departs.
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