Word: orchestra
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...happily braved early hour masking tape duty to plaster the Yard with posters. The day of the performance, I tabled outside the Science Center for a cold and windy hour at 9 a.m. I wear the sweatshirt and do these things out of a desire to see the orchestra succeed. But I can’t help think that throwing myself into things like this might be a defense mechanism against feeling removed from the group—both because I am a percussionist and because, in some ways, I feel I don’t measure...
Percussionists are physically set off from the rest of the orchestra, and we really only interact with each other. Being a percussionist also means doing lots of waiting. My section probably has the best rest counters and listeners in the whole orchestra simply because we play so little. For example, my cymbal part for Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 doesn’t even begin until a good nine minutes into the first movement. The five of us, my four first-year section mates and I, know the second violin part down pat from peering over the shoulders...
...playing, I still love my two-and-a-half hours in Sanders on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The trouble with being a percussionist is also one of the benefits: because of the simple fact that I don’t play much, I can listen to the rest of the orchestra even better. While I wait, my ear can tune in to any of the other sections, listening to the moving line in the cellos, the lilting, almost drunken-sounding flute solo or even a few notes in the lowest French horn part that are clear to me, though lost...
...music teacher for, of all things, castanet recommendations. He’s the one who encouraged me to switch to percussion in eighth grade when the flute got boring, and I was proud to tell him about HRO. “So you’re playing in the orchestra now?” he asked, knowing I had not been very serious about musical involvement in college. I told him yes, and that I was loving it, happy to note that we are the oldest continually performing symphony orchestra in the country (est. 1808). Happy to tell him that...
...impression that the rest of the orchestra is just as devoted, though just not in a professional sense. These are the musicians who played in their local youth orchestras, went to summer music institutes and cannot imagine ending their musical careers when they come to Harvard. Maybe some practice more than others, and maybe some don’t practice at all, but for five hours in Sanders every week, music is all that is on their minds...