A few little snapshots in to the behind the scenes things that happen in a musician's life.... there is a good deal of prep work that needs to happen before we hit the stage. If you are just playing for someone else, then it is just travel and practicing... making sure that you are as well prepared as you can for the rehearsals, so that no time gets wasted there.

However, if you are also running your own ensemble, there is all the logistics and administration stuff that also needs to happen... and if you are running small, flexible, and light... you do it all yourself. The larger organisations have a large backend staff to handle all of that... but often that part of the organisation starts costing more and more and gets a touch bloated. Which means that they need to raise more money, to fund people to get more money... a sort of perverse hamster wheel that often gets quite out of control.

Anyway, one of my favourite parts of the preparation process is discovering long lost gems... much of what we play is music that hasn't been played often in the intervening centuries. And it can be a crazily rewarding puzzle to locate and source the manuscripts in a dusty archive so that we can bring it back to life for a few moments! A good chunk of it is pretty decent, and a decent chunk is pretty ordinary... but all of it gets lost, as the public and the wider classical musician community tends to just go back to the same old same old year after year... whilst griping about it endlessly as well. Musicians... always complaining about something!

When the search is fruitful, it always relies on the ability of the holding institution to be able to digitise the manuscript at a reasonable cost. Sometimes, they do it for free... other times, they charge a stupidly high amount for it! Most of the public institutions are great... the private ones are a mixed bag.

... most of what I play is chamber music, so one person a part... no large sections. And so, there is no requirement to co-ordinate bowings and interpretations. That can all be done in real time during the concert with a few annotations for important things. But if you have capable and aware players, well... this is the joy of playing chamber music! That many things are left up to the moment... not like the larger scale forces, where "spontaneity" is worked out in advance and rehearsed to death!

I've been so happy about purchasing these BOOX e-readers... mostly for my comic books in colour (albeit a little faded in colour due to the technology...), but also for the ability to mark up music when I'm leading a larger orchestra and need to provide bowings and markings to the rest of the section and group before the rehearsals begin. I hate doing this... but it does make the larger rehearsals more efficient... but generally at the cost of losing individual awareness and daring.

... and winter has well and truly arrived. The mornings are freezing, and even when the heating is on... well, the ground is much colder than a metre higher. So, I've started to put my own instruments a little bit higher off the ground and insulated a bit by cushions and other padding... just so that they don't start each day at below freezing temperatures... probably not good for centuries old wooden instruments... but that said, they have probably survived much much worse!

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