Wedding Gig (Or, 58 Emails)

10/16
I get an email from Stacy, one of the trumpet players I teach with on Mondays. He wants to know if I am interested in a wedding gig. It's in November, and will pay $100-150, all music from the Canadian Brass books. (Easy gig music collections) My first reaction is ambivalent. $150 is okay for a wedding, but $100 is definitely too low. I scroll over to my calendar and check the date against all the orchestra schedules. Doesn't look like I have anything going on. We are in the midst of saving aggressively to make our down payment, and I think about the first mortgage payment on our house, due Dec. 1. If it's Canadian Brass arrangements I won't need to practice beforehand. I email back and say that I'm available. After all, I'll only need to show up, play for a few minutes, and collect the check, right?

That night I tell J I took a wedding gig in November. I say it will probably pay $150. She does not look impressed.

10/18
Stacy emails back and says he'll leave the music in my box and let me know when he gets more details.

10/19
I pick up a neatly organized binder of music from my box. The first page is a printed out spreadsheet and flow with highlighter markings. I puzzle over whose book this could be. I didn't think Stacy was this punctilious. I make a mental note not to lose my music between now and the gig and toss it in the back of my trunk.

10/22
I get the standard "Gig Info" email with time, date, location dress from Stacy. We're going to get $150. Stacy mentions that the contractor for the gig is the Tuba Player. There is a dress rehearsal, but we don't need to attend, because the Tuba Player is going for us. I notice that the horn and trombone players (LB&BD) are two of my carpool buddies. It will be fun to hang with them, and I feel much better about having taken the gig. This will be fun.

10/31
I am driving back to the hospital (Owen was born the day before) on Rt. 15 and pull into a Bruegger's to get a coffee. I notice that I have a new email. It is a four paragraph document from Tuba Player. It's addressed to the whole brass quintet and the organist. He has consulted his teacher about the best key for the Pachelbel Canon and he lists several reasons for his preference to play it in B-flat. He wonders if the trumpets will need transposed parts. He also mentions some details from his conversations with the bride, and writes out a detailed flow for the hymns in the service, which he would like us to play on. He writes that he would like to schedule a rehearsal for next week and suggests several times.

I am determined to put a stop to this "rehearsal" nonsense immediately. I write back and tell him that B-Flat is fine, and he doesn't need to worry about transposing parts. I tell him that getting together for a rehearsal is fine, but it will cost an extra $100 a person...is the family willing to pay for this?

I send the email, then text my carpool friends checking to make sure that they are on board with avoiding a rehearsal.
Response "OMG thank you, I couldn't do any of the times he suggested anyway."
I feel temporarily proud of myself for being taking charge.

As soon as I send the email, another email pops into my inbox. It is also from Tuba Player. It's a copy of the excel document song list which was in our folders, just in case we needed another copy.

Five minutes later, another email pops in from Tuba Player. It contains audio recordings of all the wedding music, for our listening reference. You know, in case any of us were unfamiliar with the Pachelbel Canon. (The B-flat version, of course.)

A few minutes after that, Tuba Player writes back again. The fee that he agreed to with Stacy was $100 for the ceremony and $50 for the rehearsal. If that's a problem, please let him know. I hold the new baby and think about the first mortgage payment. I figure that there could be far worse ways to spend an hour some evening in November than hanging out with my carpool for an hour.

J is not impressed.

11/1
I have a service in Syracuse and ride in with my brass quintet. I ask BD if he knows Tuba Player, and he tells me that he is a retired teacher from somewhere who takes lessons very enthusiastically and that this is probably his first professional gig. He says he is a nice guy who "kind of thinks it's all about the tuba." We compare schedules and I write back requesting to just rehearse at 2:30 the day of the gig. (The ceremony is at 4)

11/2
The Organist (a friend who I gig with regularly) writes and asks us to check in with her about rehearsal times since the church isn't always open.

LB responds to my email and also wants to rehearse at 2:30 the day of the gig.

Stacy responds. He's also down for 2:30

BD responds. He's good for 2:30 too.

Tuba Player responds. He's also good for 2:30.

11/5
Organist writes and says that the church won't be open until 3. We are welcome to rehearse then. My initial reaction is "Great, we can get it all done if we meet at 3."

Tuba Player writes back a few hours later and says that we will start at 2:30. He also asks us each to write back and confirm (in bold type) that we will be there at 2:20 to start rehearsal. He wants us to play along on the special vocal numbers during the ceremony. The email includes three paragraphs of clarifications regarding the order of music and the verse-refrain patterns for the hymns.

Organist writes back. She won't be there till 3. She says that it really won't take more than 15 minutes to play all this music. If we want to meet at 2:30, we have to talk to the parish about getting the building unlocked.

Tuba Player writes back. He writes that he would be willing to pay someone extra to come and unlock the building 40 minutes early for us. He also requests that he come pick up music for the singer's numbers so that the brass can play along on that as well.

Vocalist (who has been copied in on the last few emails) writes back and says "just organ accompaniment, please and thanks."

Organist texts me privately asking me whether I know Tuba Player, why he's sending so many emails, and why he wants so many extra rehearsals. She sends five more texts venting about how she knows the rest of the group can sight read anything, so what is the point of all this?

11/6
Organist agrees to give Tuba Player a copy of the vocal music if he wants it and tells him when she plans to meet with the Vocalist to practice it.

Tuba Player responds and confirms that he will indeed go to the organ/voice rehearsal to watch.

Organist says okay.

Tuba Player sends a scan of the Vocal Music (which we are not playing) to everyone in the brass quintet.

11/8
Vocalist responds to Tuba Player's email, confused because she already has a copy of the music.

11/9
I email BD/LB separately and suggest that we meet at 7 AM the morning of the gig to see if we can get in on any of the wedding photos.

LB responds and suggests 6:45 AM would work better for her.

11/12
Tuba Player forwards an email from Vocalist. She enjoyed meeting him at their rehearsal. She has a request that none of the brass players wear perfumes or colognes, because her allergies could cause extreme difficulty singing.

Tuba Player sends an email to the quintet and marvels at the acoustical properties of the space. He assures us we will sound very good in there. However, he is having too much trouble getting into the space for a 2:30 rehearsal and has decided we need to rehearse sometime during the week before. He suggests a time Wednesday or Thursday evening.

Stacy responds and commits a major faux pas, indicating that he is actually available and willing to do an outside rehearsal.

I write back and say that I'm not available for either time (I'm not--I have orchestra rehearsals scheduled) and perhaps we can just meet offsite somewhere on the day of the wedding.

LB writes back and offers her house as a place to rehearse on the day of.

Vocalist writes back (apparently she's been copied in on these emails) and offers to come over to LB's house, although she doesn't actually need to rehearse anything with us.

BD responds. He is down for meeting at LB's place.

At this point LB is texting me with every new email that pops in to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, since we are playing 5 MINUTES OF SIGHT-READABLE BRASS QUINTET MUSIC WE'VE ALL PLAYED DOZENS OF TIMES. She, like me, is only sticking with this gig for entertainment value.

Another email pops in from Tuba Player. It is a message with the Google Drive logo asking you to CLICK HERE to access the documents he has shared. It looks like spam.

LB: "Did you get that email too? Do you think it's spam?"
Me: "I don't know. I'm going to open it. If you don't hear back from me in 5 minutes delete the email and bury your phone."

I open it. I'm brought to the Google home page and asked to sign in. I sign in. I'm brought to a South American web page with a bunch of car advertisements. I immediately sign out, delete the email, and change all my passwords.

11/12
Tuba Player sends a depressed sounding email. Because I having the most restrictive schedule, it doesn't look like we'll be able to rehearse until the day of the wedding. He has also given up on trying to get brass on the vocal number. He suggests we all meet at LB's at 1:30 (for a 4:00 wedding) and then try to get into the church at 2:30, or at least 3:00 and rehearse some more. He asks LB to write back with her address and parking suggestions.

11/17
Tuba Player has not heard back from any of us. He writes "the offsite rehearsal as I suggested at 1:30 does not make sense." He will plan to arrive at the church at 2:15 and rehearse with us then. He also plans to attend the wedding rehearsal so he can talk to the bride and clarify any concerns she might have. He has, as an attachment to the email, sent us a copy of their Save the Date. They look very nice.

LB responds asking many important and entirely serious questions, like whether we need to print out the music ourselves? Will there be music stands? Which street should we park on? She notes that the bride and groom look like a lovely couple.

Stacy responds that he is "uber good" with 2:15

Tuba Player responds that he will have extra copies of the music printed out, there will be music stands there, we should park in the church lot, and we should wear black ties.

LB texts to make sure that I know to wear a black tie.

11/18
Vocalist wanders (accidentally?) into the emails again. She will also be present at the wedding rehearsal on Friday.

Vocalist emails again. She is confused about how many verses on the nuptial blessing.

Organist: Refrain-Verse-Refrain

BD responds. He is good for 2:15

Vocalist says thank you, that's what she thought.

Tuba Player confirms the building will be opened at 2:15. "See you brassers then."

LB texts"I didn't get this many emails for my own wedding!"


11/19
No emails from Tuba Player, but he attends LB's horn choir concert. They have a chat about the wedding gig. He is very excited

11/21
Tuba Player emails the last minute clarifications. Dress is tuxedos for the men, black gowns (?) for the women. Everyone be there at 2:15. Everyone bring a music stand. Tempos will all be just like the recordings. Who will down dowbeats and cutoffs? He has attached the revised songlist as an excel document again. There is a list of updated repertoire. In the recessional the second trumpet solo will now be a TUBA SOLO. (In all caps, bold type.)

I respond whoever is playing first trumpet will give cutoffs.

LB responds ditto on the cutoffs, that she doesn't have a black gown, but will wear all black.

Stacy agrees about the cutoffs.

The Vocalist writes (again) that the nuptial blessing is refrain, verse, refrain. I guess someone was still in the dark about that.

Tuba Player tells Vocalist that he will be at the wedding rehearsal tonight. He tells LB that any colored gown will be fine. (All women want to wear gowns all the time, you know.)

Stacy responds with a music theory question. He is poking the bear.

Tuba Player is still confused about the verses and refrains on the nuptial blessing.

Vocalist emails everyone to tell LB that she'll wear a black suit too. (My phone is just incessantly buzzing with new emails at this point.)

LB is also wearing a black suit.

Tuba Player has spoken with the Vocalist. Just to confirm, only trumpets on the nuptial blessing. On the refrain.

Stacy says that is "dandy."

11/22 THE BIG DAY
So the gig actually turned out to be a lot of fun. I wore my most outrageous cummerbund with my tux, brought a thermos full of hot toddy to pass around the carpool, and generally tried to keep a straight face as Tuba Player said things like "boy, I can't imagine how you guys put together stuff like this before email."

He was the sweetest guy you could imagine once I met him in person. He said multiple times how honored he was to be playing with us (he called it a "bucket list" item) and compared it to sitting in with the orchestra side by side he played on last year. (Several of us were on that too.) He was super nervous about anything he had to start or play on his own, including the big TUBA SOLO in the recessional, and looked genuinely disappointed that we didn't get to play the entire Pachelbel Canon or go through all of our postlude music before the guests had left.

The actual wedding was fine. It was really small, but the bride and groom looked happy. The actual playing went fine. We started and stopped together, and no one got lost in between, to my knowledge. Before the gig was over, Tuba Player paid us all in cash, giving everybody a $100 and a $50. I thought about how the gig was either going to be a $100 or a $150 gig, and I figured out the math. I'm pretty sure that he didn't pay himself for this gig, and that if he paid someone to come unlock the church early for our rehearsal that he probably took a loss. I felt a little bad about being mildly snarky in the emails (and more than a little bit snarky behind his back in all the texts that flew back and forth after each email arrived) but I think that he had the time of his life. His wife was there, and she took pictures of the group in front of the altar, actions shots, and phone pictures too.

Your special day only happens once, and you have to make sure that you document it properly.

Episodes

I.
I brought James his bowl of cereal. Cinnamon Cereal. It's the Aldi version of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and he thinks it's spectacular. J bought a box of it for me over the summer on a vacation week, and I turned my nose up at it. "Why would I eat that? That's kid's cereal!" (This was dishonest of me. I love sugary cereals. I always eat the worst-for-you cereal I can find when we're visiting her parents.) I didn't get into it then, so James got the box, and James loved it. He loves it so much that he insists on sipping out all the milk with a straw once he's finished the actual cereal part. And he hardly ever finishes all of the actual cereal part with anything else.

Buying Cinnamon Cereal is a once a month treat for him. When he knows it's in the house I usually hear him making noise in his bedroom earlier than usual. At about 7:30 or so I'll go up to his room and open the door. This morning he was sitting on the edge looking at the door, and as soon as he saw my face he said "Hi Daddy, we have some Cinnamon Cereal?" He asks for it when he gets up from his afternoon nap too, and then when we tell him he can't have cereal at 4 in the afternoon, would he care for cucumbers and hummus, he starts to sob that he needs it and he wants it to be morning so he can have cereal again. His deep disappointment is worsened by the fact that he's in the midst of a horrible sugar crash at that point after a morning of being out-of-control wired.

So this morning, I poked my head in his door and he said "Hi Daddy! We have some Cinnamon Cereal?"

I brought him downstairs, and went into the kitchen as he scrambled into his booster seat.

"I wanna big bowl."
"I'll pour you a big bowl."
"Make sure my bowl is big."
"Okay, it's a big bowl of cereal."
"I want lots."
"Yup."

I'd eaten already, but I needed to leave in 20 minutes, so I repacked my gig bag while I sat at the table with him and chatted.

"Daddy?"
"Yes?"
"You will not go anywhere today."
"What's that?"
"You will not go anywhere today."
"Hmm...well, I do need to go to rehearsal today."
"Why you need to go to rehearsal?"
"Why it's your job?"
"Because hat's what I do to get money."
"Why you need to get money?"
"We use money to buy Cinnamon Cereal. So I'm going to go to rehearsal today to get some more money to buy more Cinnamon Cereal. That's how we pay for it."
"You be back by suppertime?"
"Um, I don't think I'll be back by suppertime today."
"When you be back?"
"I'll be back a little after bedtime. Should I come say good night to you?"
"Yup."

J padded down the stairs holding Owen a few minutes later.
"Good morning, James! How's your Cinnamon Cereal?"
"Mommy, I'm havin' lots in my big bowl. Daddy is gonna go to rehearsal to buy me more."


II.
My carpool sat around a table at Wegmans with empty lunchplates stacked in the middle of the table and half-full cups of tea (really hot toddies, thanks to a surreptitious bottle in a handbag) steaming in front of us.

"How's the outlet table?"
I craned my neck to check.
"Still taken."
There's only one table with access to a power outlet in the Dewitt Wegmans. It's almost always taken when we arrive, usually by an old person who isn't even plugging anything in. We wait until they leave, and then we descent to power our devices as we kill the four or five hours until concert time.

"Okay guys, I need an idea for a date with J on Sunday night."
"Dinner and a movie."
"It needs to be something we can do in the house, because we won't have childcare. And it needs to be cheap. On the free side of cheap, actually."
"Hmm...so no dinner out?"
"Nope."
"You should...play a game. Bananagrams is fun."
"We don't have Bananagrams, but that could work."
"You should make dessert together."
"You can spend a little bit of money, right?"
"Yeah, a little."
"Okay, if you to a Joann's Fabric--"
"I'm curious to see where this is going to go."
"Yeah, what does a bass trombone player do at Joann's Fabric?"
"Shut up. So, if you go to Joann's Fabric, and you buy some spare fabric you could make a blanket together."
"That could be really nice, actually."
"Just to confirm, this is something you've done before?"
"Shut up."
"Can you make dinner together?"
"I'd like to give her a break from making dinner together."
"Can you keep her out of the kitchen and make dinner for her?"
"Possibly...but I'd kind of like to hang out with her, and I have trouble in the kitchen sometimes. Like with pizza, I've had no luck at all."
"Maybe you should have her make dinner while you practice Clarke Studies. That sounds like a great date all around."
"That's how it usually seems to go."

"Hey, I think they're getting up from the corner table!"
"Nope, just stretching. False alarm."

III.
"Thank you all very much for your patience. The committee would like to thank you all for your playing this afternoon, they said they heard some really, really fine playing and that the level was phenomenal across the board. They are going to hold one more round, a final round, and they'd like to hear four out of the ten of you. Okay, 4 out of 10 chance, those are good odds. So, for the last round, the committee would like to hear numbers 102, say 109, number 104, say 109, number 108, please let the last number be 109, and number 110. $*&# it. The rest of you, good job, sorry it didn't work out this time, thanks for coming down.

"Hey congrats, play well in the final round."
"Thanks, good to see you again."
"Congrats, good luck!"
"Safe travels back."
"See you at the next one."

"Hi, my name is Roy Smith, I have a reservation to fly from Charlotte to Rochester tomorrow morning? Yes, that's the one. Yes. Yes, I was wondering if there was any chance that I could get out on an earlier flight this evening. At 7:00? Yeah, that'd be great. Now, what what sort of fees would there be to get on the earlier flight? Oh, really? Wait, I'd get $10 back? That's fantastic? There's no fee, and I can go home tonight?"

And that is the story of how Southwest, even though they advertise too much during football games, is a wonderful organization. The orange juice was good too.

Brass or Woodwind?

Every week I ride in a carpool of orchestra musicians from Rochester to Syracuse. Usually the carpool is comprised of brass players, but sometimes there are woodwind players that ride along. Listed below are verbatim quotes from the trip. Test your instrument personality recognition skills to see if you can tell whether a woodwind player or a brass player is responsible for the quote.


"Oh, you eat before you play? I could never blow that into my instrument!"

"Is Ben David asleep? Let's see if we can put this cowboy hat on his head without him waking up..."

"I'm a little worried about the temperature of my instrument, so I think I'll keep it here in the car with me."

"So I bumped into Lisa at a concert the other day, and she mentioned how she had your leiderhosen in her trunk, and I thought, 'gee, I should probably pick those up for you.'"

"You know, when I finished my theory degree, such-and-such a professor gave me a hug as I walked across the stage and it just made me cry."

"I would volunteer to pat you on the hiney, but I don't think your wife would be thrilled about that."

"I'll go as fast as I can, but it takes me a little longer to pack up my instrument than it does for you.

"Laserhosen, I mean leiderhosen. Wait, laser-hosen would be even better. Pew-pew, pew-pew!"

"Would you guys like to come over to my house between rehearsals and watch a foreign film?"

"Nah, we'll just ignore everything she does on the podium and play loud in the concert."

"I try not to eat too many of those cookies they put out at the break. I'm on a diet."

"Is Ben David still asleep? Let's see if we can put this baseball cap on top of the cowboy hat!"'

"I had a really bad reed for that whole first half."

"My beard feels funny today."

"I don't do much during Jurassic Park. I just play whole notes."

"I think the dress is concert black. Semi-formal concert black, casual top. Except the bass trombone is concert plaid."