Delinquent

Sorry for the sparse posting on my part; I've been trying to finish up some arrangements for our Scandinavian Christmas concert in December and, in the parlance of my Hawaiian roots, it is kicking my 'okole. Arranging and composing always seem to take me much, much longer that I anticipate; add to that the fact that I've just recently switched from Finale to Sibelius, and things slow to a crawl (although I think I prefer Sibelius, now that I'm getting the hang of it...).

We're not even into the thick of the season, and I'm already pretty swamped. Different concerts have different timelines; for instance, for subscription shows, I need a ton of time to focus on the repertoire, as it's usually a good amount of music, and it's all about the music. As I've described in several posts, learning repertoire, or even polishing up repertoire that I've already done, is a time-consuming process - you just can't fake preparation. I've got my subscription debut with the Minnesota Orchestra coming up, which is preceded by a subscription show for another orchestra (more on that at a later date!), so that's a good amount of repertoire to contend with.

Then of course we have our very first "Inside the Classics" concerts coming up in November, which require a different kind of preparation - scrip-writing, preparing excerpt lists, memorizing lines, etc. Time-consuming in a very different way! Pops concerts present their own challenges, particularly if I'm providing arrangements. Not to mention that I head to Fort Wayne tomorrow to rejoin Ben Folds on his fall tour (we did a show together in Philly in early September and hit it off). All of which tends to lead to blogging delinquency! But, as they say, a busy conductor is a happy conductor...