Monday, August 25, 2008

Ouch. A bad review.

The Low End String Quartet's concert on Saturday went quite well. I was really happy with how things went. We had a great audience, the "early show" experiment at Velvet Lounge worked out, and we made it through our set without any major troubles. Considering all of the technical things that could go wrong (especially with my poor old laptop running the show), I'm pretty psyched about how it went.

Of course there are technical / execution things that can be improved. This was our first time performing most of the music, and we can use some more rehearsal. I need to find a better system for dealing with Andrea's violin pickup - the sound we're getting now isn't so hot.

The Post sent a classical music critic, and she really didn't like it. Oh well. I had hoped we'd get a good review that we could attach with grant proposals and add to our press kit and whatnot, but this one ain't it. Oh well. Fortunately the other group members escaped unscathed. She only harshed on me - and particularly my compositions. I can understand that viewed through the lens of post-classical minimalism (Reich, Glass, John Adams, Terry Riley, etc) my work would come off as a bad imitation.

Anyway, we've got work to do. We have two rehearsal days this week before we head into the recording studio on Monday night. So that's two work days this week where I get to have super fun and call it work.

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