It was nice to end the day on such a good note. No pun intended.

It felt great to walk into the auditorium and set up, to say hi to people, to catch up a bit. I’m sitting second chair this season (whee!), trading off with another woman concert by concert. For the first performance, we’re playing Beethoven’s Eighth, some Rubenstein, more Brahms Hungarian Dances, the Skaters’ Waltz (I get to play the bass line for this one), and a Schubert overture. As usual, we sight read it all; not quite as usual, I managed to hang on through it all, except during the stupidly easy long runs where I always lose it because I look ahead (the way one does while sight reading) and then lose my place because all the notes look the same. (I’m going to enlarge most of my music this time.That will probably help.)

I noticed that band has really helped me be more confident about where my fingers are on the fingerboard when I change positions. I can’t get away with lazy basic fingering at band the way I can at orchestra because I’m totally exposed, so in order to get the best sound possible I have to use alternate fingering. Last night I found myself automatically using alternate fingering while sight reading. I’m much more confident about jumping into higher positions too (which are technically lower in relation to the floor, but produce a higher sound because they shorten the string). I also discovered that using the heaviest bow I have is great for band, but kills me at orchestra. I’m going to have to remember to switch the bows every time I go to a different rehearsal. Actually, I may just leave my heavy bow at the studio, because I can use my lighter bow at home when working on band stuff as I’m working on technique, not volume.

All in all I was very pleased with how I did after two months off. After all, I’ve been playing Metallica and The Tragically Hip all summer. I think I played some Bach twice.

I called HRH at break to see how the finale of Supernova was going. He told me it was already over and that Lukas had won, which stunned me; I hadn’t expected that at all. But hurrah! They’ll have to add more Canadian tour dates now.

I was very pleased to get a sheet outlining the rehearsal schedule along with my pile of new music. We already have not one but two confirmed concerts this fall. The first one is in mid-November (the date may have to be altered, so it’ll be either the 18th or the 19th of November.). The second is on Saturday December 16, and as I found out at the end of the rehearsal — this is where the night officially made up for the stress of the day — we’re doing The Messiah, with choir.

Eeeeeee!

So when I got home I pulled out my full Messiah score and really looked at the bass parts. The copy I have has the three higher string lines and figured bass for keyboard (organ, ideally) but I can see what should be played by which bass instrument. They’re kind of eep, so this is going to take a lot of work for me. But hey — The Messiah! You’re all coming, right? Of course you are.

I’ve missed orchestra; I started missing it around the beginning of August. It’s good to be back.