Over the weekend, the youth symphony that I’ve been part of this past year put on its final performance of the ’22-’23 season: a production of “Raymonda” with one of the city’s big ballet schools, with three shows over Saturday and Sunday. Technically, this is more of an ‘epilogue’ kinda thing, with the Season Finale Concert happening back in April, featuring music from Star Wars, but with the rehearsals doubling in frequency from once to twice a week, and then even longer rehearsals every day during tech week, I’d say the amount of work we put in makes this qualify as the true finale, not to mention the fact that the music, composed by Alexander Glazunov, has plunged its sound deep into the crevices of my brain, and will probably take weeks to see itself out. With a project this big, I felt it only right to talk about the experience here, so without further ado, let the show begin!

Getting Settled

The first few rehearsals were all about learning and getting used to the music. This is an especially big ordeal for percussionists, as it’s often that you’ll need to play a multitude of instruments, as was the case here. Ideally, the parts would be organized such that everything that one player needed to play would be grouped together on one part, with the other parts corresponding to the other players. What we had, however, was a different part for each different instrument, like there was a triangle book, a snare drum book, a cymbal book, et cetera. With the amount of different instruments that needed to be covered for this ballet, there was a lot of shuffling of books, which was quite the inconvenience. It probably is better than the other extreme of all of the percussion parts being crammed into one huge book, at least with the number of parts that needed to be covered. I was probably the worst off in my section in this regard, juggling six different parts compared to my section-mates’ two to three. Luckily for me, the section had our beloved percussion director, who not only spent hours figuring out the part assignments in the first place, but also created a custom booklet for me that had all of the parts that I played, all in order, bringing the six booklets on my stand down to one.

The next, more straightforward, step was marking in the cuts. Even though the orchestra is capable of playing professional-level repertoire and even regularly plays alongside the city’s professional symphony orchestra, we are still a youth orchestra, and two and a half hours of music is asking a little too much of us. Not to mention the dancers, comprised of nearly all of the ballet school’s students, aged from pre-school through high school, so with the time commitment and having to come up with choreography at varying levels that lets each age group shine, doing the full ballet simply wasn’t practical. In addition to smaller parts that were cut, like short phrases and repeated sections, several of the full numbers in the ballet didn’t make it either, taking about an hour off of the original ballet. Our conductor had figured out these cuts beforehand, though, so all we had to do was mark them in our parts according to the cut list he gave us. With that all done, we now had to learn the actual music.

The Music Itself

In terms of technical playing, this music wasn’t all that difficult. It wasn’t super easy either though, and there were definitely a few spots I needed a second look at, especially in the second act, so I’ll talk through a few of them here.

Going in order of when each of these parts is played, first comes this triangle part from the Grand Adagio in Act II. The big question here was whether I needed one or two beaters to play this part. In the latter case, there would need to be another triangle suspended from a stand in addition to the one on the clip that would be played traditionally—holding the triangle with one hand and the beater in the other. The idea behind the two-beater method was to play the single notes with one hand and roll with the other. I tried it out during rehearsal, and it wasn’t the best, but I could get it where it needed to be with a bit of practice. Our percussion director recommended I try it using the single beater method, playing everything with one hand, so I thought why not? Surprisingly, it was actually easier than the method I thought was best, and it felt a lot cleaner as well. At the tempo we were taking this number, speed wasn’t the big issue I was anticipating it to be, and it was a very fun part to play!

This next little lick made several appearances in the snare drum part to Act II’s Entrance of the Sarrazins. Unlike the Adagio, this was a quick number, around 160 BPM to the dotted quarter note. That meant I had to put some work in on the precision of that roll. At this speed, I had to play it as a 7-stroke roll, which meant I actually had to put some practice into my 7-stroke rolls again. I did have to work on them to play the snare part to Scheherazade back in November, so they weren’t completely foreign, but there was quite a bit of rust to shake off. The difficult thing about 7-stroke rolls is that you end on a different hand than the one you started the roll with. As someone who is very right hand dominant when it comes to drumming, I’m super used to starting and ending my rolls with my right hand, so not only did I have to get used to ending on a different hand, but also starting with my non-dominant hand. I spent a decent amount of time outside of rehearsal getting it to sound right, which is more than can be said for most parts I play.

This was the first time I’ve actually had to play castanets ever, so I had to go through the process of actually learning how to play these properly and getting a nice, projected sound out of them. Getting a sound was pretty easy, it was the consistency that posed an issue. I had to work to get it to get that characteristic clacky sound every time. Another thing that took a while to get used to was flamming the quarter notes that weren’t preceded by a quick note. Like in the passage above, I’d flam every quarter note aside from the one directly after the triplet. Figuring out which notes would sound right with a flam took a fair bit of thought, and on top of that actually getting the flams speaking well consistently needed a bit of work.

Another fun little castanet lick I had to look at was this part from the Baccanal in the second act. The big problem here were those rolls, which are supposed to sound light and fluttery. There is a proper technique to get them to sound right, but I wasn’t able to get it down in time for the concert, so I did what any other percussionist would do: alternate my hands as fast as humanly possible. At the speed we took it sounded fluttery enough without sacrificing the characteristic clarity.

Unlike the castanets, I do know how to play the tambourine. The tricky part here was the short fast rolls. It’s extremely difficult and impractical to play these as a shake roll many would expect from a tambourine. Instead, you drag your finger along the edge of the head, and the friction causes your finger to flutter and hit the head repeatedly, creating more precise roll. Again, not entirely new to me, but not something I was all that used to. I got my fair share of finger rolls during the ballet, and the fast repeated ones in this number really put my skills to the test.

Overall, the music in this ballet was a very nice challenge, but the work didn’t stop there. The orchestra was more than just myself, and the performance was more than just the orchestra.

Putting it all Together

The first 2-3 weeks of rehearsal were all about getting the orchestra to sound like an orchestra. Nothing I haven’t done before, and those rehearsals went about as normally as you’d expect. Getting used to the music, learning how it fits in with the rest of the orchestra, the high strings not knowing their parts making sure that you didn’t miss your entrances, that kind of stuff. The final one and a half weeks was when things started to get real. We had two rehearsals with the dancers before tech week, and that was where this stopped feeling like a normal orchestra event. When it’s just the orchestra, your primary concern is being together with the rest of the ensemble, at the conductor’s tempo if you’re lucky. But now, it’s two big groups of performers that have to be in sync: the orchestra and the dancers.

As a percussionist, I wield incredible power in being the audible representation of the tempo. If I’m not with the conductor, the orchestra follows me (or whoever has the most rhythmic percussion part at the time), and we either speed up or slow down. Usually this isn’t a huge problem when it’s just the orchestra, unless you’re playing a part with a lot of fast notes or long sustained notes. The music will ebb and flow, and everyone adjusts to each other to create a cohesive sound. With dancers, however, you can’t play with the tempo as much. Not only are they moving around a lot more, but ballet dancers especially need to be extremely precise with their movements, so the orchestra has to sync up with them. The conductor is the biggest link between the two groups, and we had to be absolutely locked in with him.

While I’m used to locking in with a conductor, I usually rely on my internal pulse to guide me, and just look up for any big tempo changes. It works great in a normal ensemble setting, but playing with the dancers posed a new challenge. In addition to needing to keep the tempo on lock, we also had to stay tuned in for any minute tempo adjustments to stay in sync with the dancers. This was probably the hardest part of the performance as far as the orchestra was concerned. Most were like me in that they relied on their internal pulse when playing. It was difficult adjusting to this new paradigm, especially with only a week’s worth of rehearsals with the dancers.

Opening night rolled around, and I was excited. I was feeling the concert day buzz again after so long, which means I feel really good about the performance no matter what happened. Nothing too notable on that performance. We played well and in sync and put on an amazing show. Of course, a few small mistakes here and there, but that can’t be helped. There’s no such thing as a perfect performance.

Still, that performance was probably as close to perfect as we got. Not to say that our next two performances were bad, but there were some bigger issues that presented themselves there, mainly with staying synced up. First performance of day 2 I hope went well for the audience, but I felt way out of sync. I didn’t miss any entrances, and I played my parts right, but something felt off, almost like the entire orchestra was a little askew. Our playing felt as though our minds were elsewhere. For most of the orchestra, this was the last day before they were truly free for the summer. As for myself, I think I was just a little sleepier than normal.

The clock strikes 5:30 P.M. on Sunday; it’s time for the final performance. After having lunch at a nearby diner, I am raring to go and I am in the zone. The first act comes and goes without a problem; probably the best we’ve played it. But following the intermission, several of the musicians have checked out and are ready to go home. I noticed it somewhere in the second act. The orchestra kept speeding up. Despite our conductor nearly turning from maestro to drum major in an attempt to keep the orchestra in check, the orchestra was out. Except for the most important section: the percussion. I felt that we were the most locked we’d been all weekend, although it could have just been me. Either way, this pushing of the tempo was where the percussion didn’t have a big role, which meant I had to be on it for my entrances. And on it I was; I felt each of my notes line up with the beat of the baton, and I even saw our conductor start to relax his conducting once the percussion came in. Had we not been as synced as we were, our final performance could have ended in chaos and disaster. I like to think the percussion saved the ballet that day.

•••

And that’s a wrap! The ’22-’23 season of performances is history, and what a crazy year it’s been. From Rimsky-Korsakov, to John Williams, from Sakai to Standridge, from Oasis to Weezer, it’s been quite a year of music. So much that I can’t fit in to this post, let alone this conclusion. I think I might do some recaps of all the music stuff I’ve done this year for some of my posts this summer. I have a ton of stories to tell that have evaded this blog. Stay tuned, and I’ll catch you at the double barline!