Monday, July 20, 2020

music in the park

Saturday morning, B. embarked on a new project, and I came along to help carry things and serve as an appreciative audience. She has founded the Socially Distanced String Quartet.

For quite a while now, B. has been a violinist in a rehearsal orchestra for amateurs who claim no special proficiency; they just want to enjoy trying to play. It's been in abeyance due to the pandemic, so B. sent around e-mails to the string players asking if anyone local wanted to try out some string quartet music. The response was gratifying, so B. sent out some pieces she hoped everyone could handle - arrangements of the Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin, the Serenade attributed to Haydn, and the Pachelbel Canon - for a meetup this weekend at our neighborhood park.

The shaded monstrosity vaguely akin to a gazebo that we hoped to meet under proved to be occupied by a tai chi group with a boom box, so we found a shaded spot under trees on the lawn. Six players and I set up our chairs at an appropriate distance and set to. And it went ... well, they could use some practice. The main problem was that, at that distance and with no acoustic reflector, they couldn't hear each other over their own playing, so it was hard to stay in sync. B. has been practicing at home very hard on both violin and viola, as I can testify, and she's definitely the best player in the group.

A few parts worked. The Serenade begins with the first violin(s) playing the melody over pizzicato from the rest of the ensemble, and here the three players on that part (not including B.) showed good ensemble, though the intonation made for the spiciest Serenade you're likely to hear. I actually enjoyed that.

A few passersby stopped to listen, briefly. The one who settled down under a tree and actually stayed for a while proved afterwards to be one of the invited musicians who had just felt too shy about joining in.

They'll be doing this again in two weeks. This is the first live group music I've heard in over four months.


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