Music, Glorious Music

Up to this point we have not have had much music in our rehearsals because most of the music for this newest version of My ocean is never blue is being played live or is being recorded specifically for this performance. But in our last rehearsal (Sunday) we had almost all the music - with the exception of alittle that still needs to be recorded. And, predictably, it was amazing. I mean, we had to slosh through a lot of nitty-gritty details of when people play and how transitions will work, but to have 3 afro-cuban percussionists, a classical piano/string quartet and a post-modern guitarist all playing live is pretty great. I think one thing that worried some was how all these styles of music (and dance) would work bumped up against one another and I myself had moments of being worried too - but, after today it clearly is not going to be a problem - it just works. There is something pleasing starting the piece with a recording of Indian music that's meditative and have Jonathan's guitar slide in over that as we transition into the next section. And, there is something pleasing to hear the classical music follow some repetitive pattern on the guitar. The similarities and differences between the Afro-Cuban percussion and Indian percussion is wonderful to hear - at one point the Indian music began and you could see Sam (a Afro-Cuban percussionist) just smilling as he was listening. As I said after last week's rehearsal about the dancers, I think today was important to get the musicians understanding how the piece was working and that each group is not seperate, but we are overlapping, supporting and juxtaposing each other. It certainly was a dense rehearsal, but really a good one.