♪ KU choral chant ♪
♪ soft symphony music ♪
PAUL: Our plan in the arc of this rehearsal is to start
with a read through of the pieces so that the players are
aware of the issues that they're going to have through the cycle.
CARISSA: Let's just tune that note.
♪ flutes tuning ♪
PAUL: And then we slowly start breaking it down in smaller
and smaller increments down to really small details.
PAUL: In the sectionals yesterday you saw the French
horns working on taking mouth pieces out.
MUSIC PROFESSOR: See if we can attack it together.
Three, four.
MURIEL: Working with just the mouth piece is a really good
way to center the pitch and it's softer so it's easier to
hear everybody and you can really make sure that the air
stream is hitting exactly where you want it.
ERIC: And I'll just start with measure three on the down beat.
PAUL: Other details are like working on nuances of how
they start a note, how they end a note, the balance between
the first part and second part all of those kinds of things.
♪ bassoon ♪
ERIC: I think the A flat can be a little less at the beginning of the note.
PAUL: Other sections are working on what we call stagger breathing.
If we don't want to have a noticeable point in the music
where it's interrupted by them breathing, each player takes
a turn not when anyone else is breathing.
PHILIP: My section leader is Anna Scott who is the first alto player.
All of the graduate students and the TA's have been looking
at the scores and figuring out where things are.
ANNA: A lot of this is former phrases and I think that
will work easily.
PHILIP: Anna's done a really good job explaining
"okay right here is really exposed, you're the melody so make
sure you bring that out, but then two bars later you should
bring it down, 'cause the clarinets are going to have it."
PAUL: The players in the KU Wind Ensemble have an
extraordinary range, that's actually one of my favorite
parts of teaching here and being in this School of Music.
In the Wind Ensemble this semester we have freshmen, so
they were in high school band eight months ago.
We also have doctoral students that have played professionally.
The older students get the experience of working with these
younger students and nurturing them along.
♪ trombones ♪
ALBERT: In sectional work like that, Dr. Popiel,
he likes to have Doctoral and Master students.
We've had a lot more experience doing these type of rehearsals.
ALBERT: So don't tune down to him. You tune up.
So really listen to what Amber is giving you.
PAUL: So the detail step isn't a particularly musical one.
♪ oboes ♪
It's the mechanics of how we're making sound.
♪ oboes ♪
MURIEL: We're never beyond the fundamentals.
Your long tones can still be better, your articulations can
always be better.
♪ somber symphony music with bells ♪
PAUL: Good. I'm not certain.
That may be a bit too espressivo but I think we're closer with that.
PAUL: The luxury we get with student performers is
rehearsal time, whereas a professional group might start
this rehearsal cycle the week or two before.
You know, we're starting six and a half weeks before so we
have this luxury of time.
♪ somber symphony music with string bass ♪
Mohammed's piece, for example, some of the demands of that piece,
a professional ensemble is going to shy away from it.
PAUL: It seems like the aleatoric scrapes at D are of more
of a swirly nature than a scrape.
PAUL: That's the luxury of an academic setting is we can
program just about anything because we know we have the
time to work on it.
PAUL: That's excellent work.
Excellent work. It's haunting music.
It's so still and so sparse.
PAUL: I'm looking for the suspended cymbal and the tam-tam
to grow a little more quickly.
The last five bars please. The last five.
MURIEL: With that kind of start/stop rehearsal, we're just
really working through sections.
♪ cymbal build and crash ♪
PAUL: Yes, I like that but can it continue to grow a bit more.
ALBERT: In rehearsals like that you're trying as best as
you can to make everything fit together.
PAUL: Same spot.
ALBERT: Directors will find problems quickly and the
quicker you can get rid of a problem, the better.
♪ cymbal build and crash ♪
PAUL: Yes. Can that get brighter?
♪ cymbal build and crash ♪
PAUL: Yes. Coming along.
MURIEL: By the time the cycle is over you have a real
intimate connection with the music.
♪ band warming up ♪
PAUL: Mohammed comes on February 20.
I'd like the ensemble to have the musical decisions made.
They may not be perfected yet but I'd like to have the bulk
of that work done so that Mohammed still has a chance to
react to it and redirect if necessary.
MOHAMMED: I still am having a lot of trouble with the
orchestration of the clarinets and saxophones.
♪ symphony music ♪
MOHAMMED: That's much better.
KATIE: The more time we get to spend with this piece,
the more we'll be able to focus on really conveying the
message and knowing which lines need to come through.
JANIS: This is going to be the world premiere.
Something special written for us that we give to New York.
PAUL: And the day that he finished the symphony, he wrote
a note about remembering when the towers came down.
The day learning his city was no longer invincible.
It reminds me how human and how personal the whole thing is
not just to Mohammed and to me but to everyone that went
through that and to think about performing that in New York
is a daunting task but I like to remind myself above all else
that's what this is about.
♪ soft symphony music ♪