Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Behind-the-Scenes: LA Bach Festival Part I (My Experience)

The Opening Concert (October 19th) of the 75th Annual Los Angeles Bach Festival begins on Sunday. As a member of the chorus in the Finale Concert on November 2nd, this fact fills me with both dread and excitment.

I usually talk about experiencing the arts from the patron's perspective, but in light of my looking frantically at my Bach B Minor Mass score, I thought it'd be fun to write as someone from the other side, sharing a little behind-the-scenes action. So over the course of the festival, I'll be tossing my two cents and seeing what background and exclusives I can muster from those hard at work in making this event happen.

To give a glimmer into the insight of what it's like to be a member of the chorus, we have been rehearsing as a group weekly since Sunday, September 14th. Each rehearsal lasts 2-3 hours. At the writing of this entry, our group rehearsal time is 10-15 hours, but this is before we kick into high gear and have a span 3 rehearsals in one week before our performance (that should be fun :)).

But there's no counting the collective hours of people working on the music on their own. It's nice though, to know personally the amount of time and effort it takes to to make something come alive. I think I take that appreciation with me when experiencing LA - that while it might seem like something happens before your eyes, it takes a lot of time and energy to get there.

So as I dive back into some more Bach (It's everywhere: in the score I'm learning from, the cyberbass.com listening and singing along, the youtube videos I look up to hear it all collectively when I'm not in rehearsal), take some time to check out the events of the festival (some of which are FREE!). And I'll hopefully be back soon with something new to say as things get underway for the 75th Annual Los Angeles Bach Festival.

-Charity Tran, Web Coordinator

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