It’s late. I should be heading off to bed, but I’m fairly humming with energy. You would think I’d been dancing for the past four hours.
So, tonight was the gig I was so very worried about. While I can’t say I played my absolute best, I think I did well enough. Here were the positives: most of the tunes fell really nicely – I only had to manipulate octaves on one of them (out of the fifty or so we played tonight, that’s pretty amazing); I was able to play all but three of the reels; my hands didn’t shake once – I barely felt nervous; our imported pianist was incredibly nice, was perfectly happy to chat about most any subject, and I never felt like I was not playing to his satisfaction, and he even gave us all hugs as he left; my inner dork remained in hibernation – I did not drop anything (except my pencil, but it just dropped, it did not fly across the room), I did not run into anything, I did not fall over, I was able to converse like a normal human being. Here were the negatives: after a three hour rehearsal, where I played fine, I had several weird moments. One was a solo I totally forgot I was meant to play. When I finally jumped in, I was in the wrong octave and key. On another solo, my finger refused to move, so I didn’t make a note change. And, I was late, both to the rehearsal and to the gig (though we were all late to that due to a horrible lack of parking). I think, or at least hope, that I made a reasonably good impression. This was, I suspect, a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I honestly feel that I did the best that I could in the given time frame. In the end, that’s all anyone can ask of me, and that’s all I can expect from myself.
Tags: monthly party, nervousness
