Pre-Concert

You find out bizarre things about people in moments of stress. This is particularly true of pre-concert jitters, as most musicians are fighting with the 'flight' response of adrenaline. Last night, I discovered that one of Amanda's favorite flicks is the awesomely over-dramatic, ultimate band-nerd "Drumline". I've added this small item to her previously exposed peep fascination.

“Sunday, March 23, 2008

PEEP MUTILATION

A: Today is the blessed day for my favorite holiday pastime: peep mutilation. My family has been exchanging peeps ever since I can remember and for whatever psychotic reason, some of us have difficulties in parting with our peeps. Seriously, it is a bit psychotic - I used to have a freezer full of peeps. Probably 7 or so years worth of peeps - they’ve made all the moves - thawed/froze/thawed/froze - until they barely resembled what they used to be. I finally had to throw them out a couple of months ago - I was freaking myself out with my absurd attachment to the sugared friends. But there is a dichotomy: when I am with my cousins during Easter, we engage in the perverse pleasure of inventing new ways to destroy peeps: peeps in the microwave - the explosion is akin to the demise of the StayPuft marshmallow man on Ghostbusters. Other peep deaths have included melting in coffee, shooting them out of a potato gun, frying them and roasting them over a campfire. - Tis the season."

We all have our oddities. As I was saying, though, we all deal with the time pre-concert in very different ways. Beth likes to keep really busy right up to the time we go onstage, Amanda usually needs some quiet focused time, and as I will have responsibly missed my 5 o'clock daily beer, I get a little hyper and then sleepy. All this, though, seems to disappear when we get on stage-both our stage presence and professionalism have come a long way in the last few years, and the idea of leaving the ego at the stage door and playing like a trio is central to that.

Last night, janus gave a kick-ass performance of new works for trio by Princeton composers. We received six unique and equally engaging works from the graduate composers and faculty at the beginning of August and have been working through them both with and without the composers ever since. I think it may have been the most painless and delightful composer/trio workshopping I've ever been a part of; we were well prepared and the composers each had very clear ideas of what they wanted from their pieces. I think we may have just added a couple of hours to our permanent repertoire list...