Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has communicated birthday wishes via phone message, email, or on their journals! You are a wonderful and loving bunch of people, and I am honoured to call you all my friends.

The weather is lovely, which is a gift in and of itself. My birthday celebration began a wee bit early; last night, in fact, when t! and I went to to hang out with Jes, the bassist of local Celtic band Squidjigger, and I came home with a new friend. Almost exactly thirteen years to the day after I bought my cello, a new bass instrument has entered my life.

She is a Vantage fretless bass, model number 330b (we think), with a lovely grained rosewood fingerboard, satin-finished neck, and a deep emerald-green stained body. She hasn’t told me her name yet, although I suspect one. She’s about ten years old but has only been played a handful of times, and never gigged, so she is in almost original condition. The jack is a bit finicky and she needs a tune-up, but that’s standard maintenance.

There is an entire subculture of basses with cello tuning, called tenor basses. Bet you didn’t know that. I didn’t until I started researching it idly a couple of weeks ago, because I can’t even conceive of finding the time or brain space with which to learn new fingering and scale system on an instrument with different strings. I knew that if I was ever to play an electric bass, I would want to up- or downtune it to cello tuning, because then all my fingering would be the same. And then… a fretless bass showed up on Craiglist at a really excellent price. (I didn’t even know there were such things as fretless basses. Shows how much attention I paid at the instrument and lutherie exhibit downtown last year. Although to be fair, I was searching for electric cellos to test, not looking at basses.) The idea of fretless appealed to me because I can’t stand the idea, sound, or feel of frets under a string when I play. It’s not like I was actively seeking a bass. It was just a vague if-ever thing sitting in the back of my mind that put up its hand and cleared its throat diffidently when I saw the listing.

I tested it with a clear mind, ready to say no if it felt wrong or if I was at all uncomfortable with the instrument or the situation, but from the moment Jes handed it to me and I put it on my lap it felt balanced. Usually when people hand me guitars I feel awkward and as if I have to hold them in place or keep them from falling. t! says the moment he saw me holding it he knew it was going home with me, but I don’t know when I decided it was actually mine. I think I slowly grew into it over the evening, as I explored the feel and sound of it, and talked with t! and Jes about basses and styles and makes and music in general. Aside from acquiring the new instrument I made a new friend, because Jes is a freelance writer-theatre-music person like I am, and we intend to stay in touch. I knew things were going well when no one made noises about wrapping things up once I’d sat with the bass for a little bit. We ended up spending two and a half hours there. He has handsome cats, and lovebirds too.

Also, the bass is pretty. I wouldn’t have even looked twice at the ad if the pictures had shown it to be a loud colour, a strange shape, or painted oddly. I wish the picture did her more justice; she has a pretty glow thanks to the varnish, and the flash seems to have pointed out fingerprints that I was certain I’d polished away. She is pretty, and she feels good in my hands. And she was astonishingly inexpensive. Anything is cheap in comparison to the price scale of the cello, but this was half the price of what decent quality fretless basses start at in store, and certainly more than acceptable for an instrument that will be experimental, never my primary focus, and may be played twice a month. t! sent me home with a practice amp, too, so I don’t need to invest in anything more.

Adele feels very kindly towards her new younger sister; no scraps or arguments or snits. All is well.

A huge thanks to everyone who made it out to the concert last night. There were stalwart supporters there as well as unexpected faces. It was wonderful to see you all, and I hope you enjoyed yourselves. It was great to have my five-year-old goddaughter there, pepped up on gummy worms and thoroughly excited about the night. “I get to hear Autumn play her cello — then there will be fireworks!” she was heard to exclaim. It’s nice to be ranked up there with the pyrotechnics. She came racing up to give me a flying hug when we were done, and I asked her if she liked the music. “I liked it, but I liked yours the best!” she told me. (Because, you know, the five-year-old ears of a godchild can pick your line out of everything else. It’s part of the godparent magic and mystique.)

As is becoming more and more common in concerts, time flowed away from me as we played: I closed the Water Music suite (hereafter to be referred to as the Linen Chest suite) to see the music of the Les Miz medley and thought, Oh, are we already at the end? I spent most of that time trying to focus. The cello zone was unattainable last night. Every once in a while I managed to achieve the headspace of ‘Hey, this is kind of pretty’, which was always immediately followed by ‘Oh, damn; so much for that’. There are concerts that I walk out of feeling fabulous. This was not one of them. Which is not to say the concert went badly — apart from two timing/wrong entry errors, it went well — or that I played abysmally — I was adequate (not as on as I’d have liked but that came from not being able to focus). I just didn’t enjoy myself very much. I kept trying to be in the moment, and simply couldn’t. (Although sure enough, I found myself using different fingering on the fly last night and consequently fumbled.)

There are three aspects of a concert experience, I realised as I discussed it with friends afterwards. My personal experience (or any individual player’s experience); the orchestra’s experience as a unit; and the audience’s experience. (There’s probably a separate conductor’s experience too, now that I think about it.) What I experience and feel about my performance is not necessarily the orchestra’s overall experience, and certainly does not signal or predicate the audience’s experience. And that’s important. I’m glad I can leave a concert that I felt neutral about and hear that audience members enjoyed themselves.

People gave us a standing ovation before we started. That was nice. Unnecessary and perhaps a bit over-enthusiastic (or optimistic, I’m not certain), but nice.

This will certainly go down in my history as the coldest Canada Day concert ever. I shivered throughout the overture and the Mozartiana, even despite wearing stockings and shoes and heavier black clothes instead of the linen sheath and sandals that comprise my usual Canada Day concert garb. Attendance to the festivities in general seemed lower than usual, perhaps due to the cooler temperatures and the brief cloudburst that had hit late in the afternoon.

The fireworks were great, even though they were oddly paced (such is the risk with live pyrotechnic displays). We hung around at the end and were treated to a post-script display of all the ones that failed to go off in the original firing. It was clear that some of them were designed to be a backdrop to the finale. I saw styles of fireworks I’d never seen before, too, which was exciting, and as Karine says, made me feel like a kid again.

Well, there. That’s the end of this orchestral season, my sixth with this group. I wish I could have personally ended it on a better note (no pun intended — my intonation on that final A flat was excellent). It’s hard to walk away from something that climactic feeling flat.