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Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Playing in a Pit Orchestra

I found an ad on craigslist for a percussionist to play the pit orchestra for the Novato's Young Artist Repertory Theater's presentation of the musical "Honk!" - a British Smash-hit retelling of the Ugly Duckling Story. I am playing drum set, suspended cymbal, claves and shaker. It is nice to be playing percussion in a show again. The musicians had our 1st rehearsal at 2p today and our 2nd at 8p. The 2p rehearsal was the casts dress rehearsal and their 1st time running through the show straight through. It was also my 1st time seeing my percussion part so I got to sight read. I did pretty well. What made the 2p rehearsal even more interesting was that we had an audience. It was a couple of elementary school classes. They were a quiet audience.

The show looks good. The cast is made up of middle and high school kids. There are some good actors in the cast. They all look so cute in their outfits.

Now the musical itself. The story is ok, the music stinks and the lyrics are just cheesy. It has that same typical musical sound that D-Land uses all the time in their recent animated movies. So predictable and so pretty. . . pretty boring. But as a musician I can play anything as long as I have cool parts to play. I did not have to rehearse the musical for over a month like the cast does. I just have to hear it for 4 shows which are on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

So for the next 4 days I will enjoy playing percussion and contributing to a regional premiere of a children's community production.

Posted by Eric at July 14, 2004 11:10 PM