The only thing I had to do yesterday was get myself into New York City for rehearsal of the Bach with the Oratorio Society of New York.  The easiest way to do this is to catch the Montclair-Boonton line into Penn Station and take the E subway up to the Turtle Bay area.  This costs roughly $14, not including any tempting snacks or tea picked up on the way out of Penn Station( I pass four Starbucks and several other various coffee shops on this particular route)

The cheapest way( for me) is to meet my uncle in the Park80 West office park and leave my car there while he drives the rest of the way in.  This costs me $2 in Garden State Parkway tolls.  It costs him whatever gas his car consumes, and the 8 dollar toll to cross the GW bridge.  It also gets me there in less time, and home before 11 PM.  Not to mention, it’s always a fun adventure riding with my Uncle John.  I get to hear all sorts of great stories about Emergency Department shenanigans, incompetent interns, and the latest government ridiculousness.  My uncle also drives like a character from The Fast and the Furious.   Yesterday, we discussed our practice methods for the Bach and how confident we felt we were about our progress.

I enjoy practicing the Bach, I’ve spent a fair amount of time with the learning mp3s and my score going over various drills to prepare for each weeks performance.  I ought to be great at it, I have very few other responsibilities.  I can’t help being a little arrogant though, my sight reading is good, my ear is better.  I only worked for a few hours this week on the pieces we were to be rehearsing on Thursday.  They were fairly easy, and I didn’t really review the previous movements.  I already knew them.  I took the extra hour saved by riding with my uncle and not on the train and looked over everything without spending a lot of mental energy on it.  I left for Park 80 west with plenty of time to get there.

When I take this route, the only thing I’m responsible for is getting myself to Park80 West around 6:00 PM.  I’ve done this successfully several times.  I know the route.  I felt I was reasonably certain about the overview of the area.  I stopped at the red light between Grove Street and Alexander, and realized that the road ahead of me was closed.  High winds that day had taken out a few trees and those had dragged down power lines.  Grove street was blocked right as it turns beneath the university and the cemetery.

This is bad news.  Both universities and large cemeteries have in common that they make a mess of the surrounding road structure.  The tall bluff that the university sits on doesn’t help matters either.  No, the only  way through the snarl of “aesthetically planned residential neighborhoods” tombstones, and campus buildings was blocked by large oaks, sparking wires, and aggravated police officers.  The short of it is, I was about to be very, very lost.

I spent the next 20 minutes cycling through various way-finding techniques, such as the reasonable detour (there wasn’t one) looking for signs (this is New Jersey, if you don’t already know where you’re going, leave!)  trying to ask someone (… yeah, right) and pulling over and banging my head on the steering wheel (not particularly effective, but satisfying)  I finally came across a partially-obscured GSP North emblem and followed it gratefully, made a few other circles trying to locate other GSP signs and got myself back on track. Of course, through this whole ordeal, I was kicking myself for having forgotten my cell phone on my desk.

I did eventually get there, my uncle wasn’t too annoyed, and we made it into the city only a few minutes late.  I proceeded to have a pretty terrible rehearsal.  We didn’t sit in sections that evening.  The director wanted us to really listen to each other.  I also picked up a bit of chest congestion in Boston, so I couldn’t hit any notes below a B.  After each note that my voice cracked on, I couldn’t find the one after it, or the one after that.  Without my fellow Altos to listen to, I was, for the second time that day, most definitely lost.  I tried other methods of pitch-finding.  Looking for a similar note on the parts I could hear (bass and tenor… I wasn’t always fast enough to transpose and reacquire my pitch) finding my perfect middle-c (not a particularly common note in the b-minor mass) and hiding behind my score and mouthing the words until we stopped and I could catch up again (not particularly effective or satisfying)

It occurred to me in the middle of rehearsal that I knew the B-minor Mass about as well as I knew my route to get there.  With no additional complications, I am reasonably competent.  As soon as something goes wrong, I am completely and utterly lost.

Practice is the only cure for this particular malady.  I will be working harder to correct both of these shortcomings this week.

Also, as I feared.. when practicing the Et Ressurexit in sectional rehearsal, we sung in counts.  Et Ressurexit is in 3/4.  Right in the middle of a rest on beat one, I happily sang out 1+ 2+ 3e+a 4!  The director stops and looks around quizzically “Who just said 4?”  I chose that moment to drop my pencil and spend some time looking for it under my chair.  This is a known problem with me and the Et Ressurexit.  I’ll be practicing not counting to 4 this week as well.  Lest I give you the wrong impression though,  of the errors made that evening, the most glaring and embarrassing were not, in fact, my fault.  I also like commas.  Good day.