Cutting Room Floor: Mozart On Wheels
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Labels: cutting room floor, fun
Labels: fun, random thoughts
Labels: fun, music and politics
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Labels: audience feedback, fun, programming decisions
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Labels: fun, music and politics

Labels: fun, visual impact
Yeah, that's piano superstar Lang Lang, there on the heel, and his signature just next to the third, um, racing stripe(?) on each shoe. Not only that, both the man himself and NY Phil music director designate Alan Gilbert were seen sporting the limited edition sneaks last week at the big Central Park concert. The mind boggles. The new Dudamel Dog in LA and Staccato's long-running Osmo Cosmo are one thing, but this seems like a whole new level of vanity marketing for our sleepy little genre.Labels: fun, musician humor
Labels: fun, random thoughts
Labels: fun, inside the orchestra, sports
Labels: contemporary culture, fun, iPod playlists, new music
Labels: fun, inside the orchestra
Labels: fun, inside the orchestra
Labels: fun, musical dorkery, osmo
Fellow violist Matt Young helpfully snapped that shot with his cell phone in the men's locker room at Orchestra Hall, shortly after I finished changing into the green polyester leisure suit and ultra-paisley polyester shirt in which I would spend the next couple of hours. See, the theme of the evening was the music of Swedish supergroup ABBA, and the orchestra was playing backup to an incredible a cappella band from Finland called Rajaton, and Sarah and I had decided to get into the spirit of things with some rented disco-era costumes. Let's just say that one of us looked a lot better than the other...
Labels: fun, musical dorkery
Labels: fun, musical dorkery
Labels: fun, state of the art, the long-suffering audience

Conductors can and do deviate from this, of course, and as long as the rhythm isn't too horribly difficult, we don't actually need each beat spelled out for us to stay on target. But generally, we expect beat one to be a downward slash, beat four is the opposite, and beats two and three need to be left and right motions of some sort.
No kidding. That's exactly what it looks like - the usual downward slash for one, followed by a light bounce and curlicue at the bottom for two, then an upward left sweep for three, and a final bounce up and to the right for four. When I was new in the orchestra, my stand partner at the time, Kerri Ryan, and I spent an entire week determined to diagram the Rilling beat pattern, and that's what we came up with. We were, in fact, so taken with our diagram that we began writing it in our music (without the numbers I've included above) wherever we would normally have written "In 4." (This will doubtless cause much confusion for other violists in future performances, but I think this is balanced out by the distinct possibility that, since Rilling frequently has us use his personal set of orchestral parts, the next person to see the diagram will also be playing the piece under Rilling, and might, after a few minutes, actually figure out what the squiggle is supposed to represent.)