NaBloPoMo

I'm not sure why I decided to join this daily blog posting group. I mean, my life isn't all that interesting to have something profound and worthwhile to write about on a daily basis! But, perhaps the pressure of needing to write something, or post a picture of something each day will give me an incentive to do something useful each day this month.

My useful task for the day was spending an hour doing music homework. In this instance it was listening with headphones (earbuds) to a recording of John Rutter's Magnificat which our church choir and orchestra is performing in early December. I'm concert mistress of the orchestra, aka 1st chair 1st violin, and I figure I need to know the work really well before we head to dress rehearsals with the hired guest musicians. So I listened tonight, tried to figure out all the changing time signatures and made notes about things to ask the conductor. I pencilled in bowings, marked some cues in and made sure rests are marked at page turns.

I had never heard of John Rutter until I started playing church music, and he is now one of my favorite composers. He is a modern, living composer whose music has the dissonance and changing meters of modern music yet is very melodic and deeply moving. And it is fun to play! Not quite the marathon of notes that is the Messiah and Vivaldi's Gloria, but with all the changes of time signatures it keeps us musicians busy and focused!