I woke up in a swell mood today, albiet around 11:30am (Shudarp!).

Last night I played for the Back to the ’80s musical band just filling in. I had fun hanging out with the band and catching up with everyone, and afterwards headed back to a patented Party At Jess’. We must have had about a dozen of them during the run of Little Shop of Horrors, and it’s always fun to hang out with the assorted crowd there. This show has a bigger cast than Little Shop did, and the dynamics at the party are different, but it was a great night. I believe we left around 3ish, so that’s my excuse for the sleep in.

Today, however, I’m traveling Back to the ’90s. It seems I blew out my download quota on my internet, and they’ve pushed be back to 64kbps, almost dialup speed, almost 1996-speed! It must have been all that illegal music downloading… all those new release movies I downloaded… all that heavy research. What ever it was, I’m in the 90s until wednesday when I am shot back through to the now. In the meantime, it’s not all bad. I’m just listening to Peter Andre, wearing white denim and taping the odd “Murder, She Wrote” telemovie off the TV onto my VHS tapes.

Heh, VHS. You were good to us, but we dropped you as soon as something prettier and shinier came along.

Until wednesday, if you want to contact me, use my Ozemail email account. It might me a few days to reply though, they charge $5 an hour, and I’ve gotta wait for my brat sister to stop calling her friends about the latest episode of Friends.

I joined our community’s elite to witness the best our little town could summon up last night at the latest concert given by the Wollongong Symphony. To make my opinion of the event crystal clear, I’ve decided to bold the major issues.

Arriving late, mostly because who in their right mind starts a concert at 6pm, I was standing outside Door 6 of the Entertainment Centre as the orchestra struck up their first piece, Also Sprach Zarathustra. I was talking to one of the staff when I hear a loud applause after about 30 seconds. “So you mean they aren’t playing the whole work, just the bit that everyone recognizes?” Fantastic. The second piece began. It was, as the compere later recounted “John Williams’ Star Wars Suit” (sic).*

The program continued to push the boundaries and present rarely heard high art pieces, like the 1812 Overture, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and as our able compere described, after a moment of sheer terror and whythehelldidn’tireadthisbeforeiwalkedonstage “Pro-ko-Five’s Peter and the Wolf“. No one else seemed outraged that Pro-ko-Five copied significantly from the more often performed Prokofiev.

Add to this “fireworks and special effects” that were actually just lights so bright I feared I might have an epileptic fit**. Oh, and the Japanese soprano, who apparently Wowed the people around me with her renditions of Ave Maria, Nessun Dorma and ALW’s Muzak of the Night.

The orchestra performed better than the first time I saw them, but there were still plenty of horn flubs, messy string passages and the like. The massed choir was a bit lumpy and could have done with a conductor of their own, because they sure weren’t following the orchestra’s conductor. One gentleman with a rather obnoxious voice seemed to be right in front of a microphone and insisted on singing badly most of the night. I’ve done the massed choir thing before and having some old man come along and sing whatever he feels like when everyone else has done the hard work is pretty annoying.

Certainly, though, my favourite point of the evening was at the reception afterwards when more Japanese artists were performing on Koto and Shamisen. The faces of the “music lovers” was gold as they listened to the performers playing “Waltzing Matilda”, but thinking it was traditional Japanese music. It was so Christopher Guest I could hardly contain myself.

* I actually wanted to double bold this sentence, but it wouldn’t let me.

** I actually was diagnosed with mild epilepsy and do suffer strange things when I see ultra bright light.

Speaking of film scores…

I was just listening to the In Like Flint film score for the first time (I was unaware it was composed by the legend Jerry Goldsmith), and suddenly my ears pricked up. This short theme sounded familiar. VERY familiar. I knew exactly where else I had heard it: Elliot Goldenthal’s score for Batman Forever, during the dance montage cue.

I’ve collected the two clips for you to have a listen and see what you think.

The first is a clip from “New York Skyline” from the film score In Like Flint (1966) by Jerry Goldsmith. On closer examination, the phrase is part of the larger Flint theme. The melody in question is formed from an augmented fourth. It is first iterated in this cue as D natural followed by the A flat. The second time it is played, it is decorated with an F and a B flat. It is then iterated again a tone down (C to G flat).

The second clip is taken from “Mr E’s Dance Card” from the film score Batman Forever (1995) by Elliot Goldenthal. Notice this time it appears exactly between the two Flint versions at D flat and G. It also adds an A before it lands on the G.

I’m entirely convinced it’s coincidence (afterall, it is a nice interval) and the iterations are different enough. But what a coincidence!

I spent a few hours today at the theatre arranging the stuff in the orchestra pit and setting up our headphone monitoring setup for the kids musical. The majority of the work was done my Tim a week ago (thanks!), which was a luxury on our usual waiting till Monday to get it done. Now the band will be able to spend our full day rehearsal tomorrow actually in the pit and adjusting levels.

I’ve also completed my research and notes for a listening exam on Monday. I think I can pretty confidently recognise each piece when hearing an extract, and I’ll also spend tomorrow memorising my notes and I’ll be set.

And it’s not even 8.30! I might watch a movie…

No More Chances

The rehearsal period of around thirteen or so weeks has drawn to a close tonight as we ran our final dress rehearsal. It wasn’t too bad all things considered. I’ve rehearsed shows in better and worse conditions at this point. I didn’t have any prop issues tonight, remembering everything I was supposed to. Lines were better, with only very minor flubs (I don’t expect this to be the norm, unfortunately).

Tonight we firstly had a camera man from a local news show come and film a few numbers and then interview both Jessica and myself. I’ll try to grab some of that if they play it tomorrow night. We also had the photographers come and snap all the way through our run which is always a wonderful memory of the show.

I did at one point tell Koby that I wanted to return to the orchestra pit after this, or do a show playing not a leading character. I find it is extremely exhausting, but no doubt will pay off in front of an audience. That said, I’m now attached to FIVE (yes FIVE) proposed projects as Musical Director for next year. It’s entirely possible that none will happen (particularly as the group are producing fewer shows next year due to theatre renovations) but there is a good chance one will see the light of day and that will give me something to do.

Now it’s time to sleep before uni in a matter of hours and squeeze in as much of everything else that I can. This is good busy.