Gatton Music Zone 2008

During the first week of the Spring school holiday, I went on a residential music course near Reigate, London at a boarding school called The Royal Alexandra and Albert School. Just as last year, I had a whale of a time.

I play the cello, and I was in the Symphony Orchestra. We rehearsed in the school chapel (totally massive, modern and plain weird-looking) whilst the Jazz band rehearsed in the Activities Hut and the Wind Orchestra rehearsed somewhere else. The Symphony Orchestra must have had about 70 people in.

Apart from the first day (we arrived at 11am) and the final day (concert day) we had about 7 hours of rehearsals a day. We would have had about 23 hours of rehearsing in all between Tuesday and Saturday. It really was hard work but I thoroughly enjoyed it and I feel that I made a great improvement on the cello. I also enjoyed the opportunity to play in a full orchestra, as my normal orchestra back home is just a string orchestra, which whilst great fun and very profitable, is not the same as being part of the overall effect of strings, wind, brass and percussion. It was also very different to be playing in an orchestra around 4 or 5 times the size of my string orchestra, and I was certainly not accustomed to having a brass section blaring away right in my ears. As the conductor of the Symphony Orchestra put it, the trumpets were not allowed to make the skin peel of the cellists' ears, and that singing our hair was an adequate noise. <:( Between rehearsals, we had large amounts of free time, and at least six eating opportunities a day. The food was delicious and I'm sure all instrumentalists there would agree, suitably filling for the ravenous stomachs of those who had been slaving for long periods of time. During the free time, I played large amounts of table tennis, pool and PS2, as well as playing tennis and indoor football. Also, we watched Liverpool destroy Arsenal on TV, and then laughed at the Gunner's fans who were claiming to be the better team!

The music we played was quite hard, but I managed to learn it all well in time for the concert. It amazed me how I could comfortably play complicated passages at the end of the week that I could only imagine doing at the beginning when the music was first put in front of me. I was tremendously helped by the two sectionals we had on Wednesday and Thursday, so thank you very much to the cello tutor!! :D

We played. . .

• La Seraglio by Mozart- This was really fast, the cellos had quite a bit of tune.

• Slavonic Dance by Dvorak- This was very complicated note-wise but fun to play.

• Schubert Symphony No. 8 (Unfinished) first movement- I loved playing this, it was very exciting and mysterious, and I had to count like mad. I kept nearly missing C# though.
  

• Swan Lake third movement Czardas (Hungarian Dance) by Tchaikovsky- This was probably the easiest of the things we played, but I had to cope with a tempo change and a page turn at the same time.

• STAR WARS by John Williams- I absolutely loved playing this, it was noisy, quiet and exciting. Favorite movement- Jar-jar's theme. I think the whole audience greatly enjoyed it.

As we set up for the Friday morning rehearsal, I got my cello (called Rufus) out of the case to find that my C string had unravelled. I sat down and began tuning it, then the other three strings all unravelled as well. At this point I went and sat away from the orchestra so that they could start rehearsing whilst a tutor came over to help me sort out my cello. As she was doing so, there was a great "CRACK" and I looked to see that my bridge had snapped clean in two. I think that the wood must have slightly warped or something, and it was not used to having all four strings radically tuned together. I thought that that was the end of me making any more music that week.

Then I was informed that there was a shop for string instruments just down the road in Merstham and I felt much better about the situation. The tutor rushed my cello off there, and I was soon informed that I could expect it back with a new bridge by the end of the day. Only a short while later in the rehearsal, one cellist said that she wasn't feeling well and needed to sit out, so she let me borrow her cello for the remainder of the morning (she was feeling ill until the afternoon). I would like to thank her for that (not for being ill, but for the lending of the cello). That same day another cellist's strings all went funny and during the concert yet another cellist had to slip out and was sick. Someone had the audacity to suggest that this was all because there were 13 cellos in the Symphony Orchestra!!!

I got my cello back in the afternoon, just in time for a rehearsal for the Friday Evening Informal Concert. Thank you very much to both the tutor and the conductor of the Symphony Orchestra for their helpfulness in getting my cello repaired swiftly and efficiently.

In the Informal Concert, the strings played a Sarabande and the Master and Commander Theme. In the Master and Commander Theme, I had to play a lot of stuff in the tenor clef, when I'd only seen the music once before. I don't know why it was written in the tenor clef, it didn't go very high, and I would have probable felt more comfortable if it had just stayed in the basic bass clef. I think I coped though! :) Also, the lead cellist had arranged a piece by Rodriguez called La Cumparsita for four cellos, and I performed in that. It was syncapated. Well done to her; it sounded really good!!

I thought that the bassoon group and the pair on the 5-octave marimba were very good and impressive and well done everyone who played in that concert.

On the day on the concert, we had to been out of the boarding house at 9am, as Dave (the guy looking after the people in our house) had to go on a course for something. Those in the Symphony Orchestra had to wait till 10am for their coach to arrive, so that wasn't much fun.

Once at Leathehead Theatre, we had to lug heavy luggage up two floors to somewhere it would be locked up. Then, whilst the Jazz Band were rehearsing, we went out and bought lunch. I had a very interesting sandwich labelled Red Leicester and Spanish Onion, that seemed to contain numerous other ingredients as well. It was nice, though, so I'm not complaining.

During our pre-concert rehearsal, I realised that we were going to be squashed a bit. We manouvered as much as we could, always trying not to fall off the stage. In the concert, I kept knocking into the viola on my right.

We were first on in the concert, and I think we performed really well, and got progressively better as we went on. It was quite an experience being part of a great big orchestra playing in front of a massive audience stretching far back on the tiered seating. My particular congratulations to the violinists who succeeded in picking up and learning to play the viola as there was a lack of violists in the orchestra (none)!! :D

Thank you to all the house staff, cooks, music tutors, string repair man and all the other musicians as well for giving me a superb, beneficial week!!!