orchestrated chaos

With the suffocating spectre of a rehearsal tomorrow night with the NUS Centennial Orchestra looming above this weekend night, I couldn't help wondering why I'm feeling a strange combination of dread and frustration and a general give-up-ness.

These strange feelings would seem inexplicable given that I've had quite a bit of a break from orchestral playing (since May after M Butterfly). I wondered if it was the rather daunting passages of running quintuplets played at 150 to 200 crotchet beats per minute courtesy of Casteels the Composer. However it isn't that as well, because I don't think in an orchestra of 100 people, we're really expected to sound all the notes more than make a show of playing these notes with a blur of fingers.

Rather, this dread stems from the instinctive knowledge that tomorrow night will herald a re-entry into the power play between the different conductors and amateur orchestras. And it isn't just that. Playing under 10 plus pages of written agreement stipulating everything from dress codes to pay deductions in the event of violating such and such clause of page XX of the contract adds a whole lot of responsibility, stress and pretty much takes the fun out of the whole thing anyway. More so is the nagging guilt that comes from knowing that the NUSSO was supposed to play for this thing too, but can't now because YMS has hired enough players already. And being in NUSSO as well, I received an email saying that tomorrow's NUSSO rehearsal is cancelled because the NUS Centennial Orchestra is using their venue. (the stimulus for this entry, really.)

I know it all sounds stupid and rather trivial, but I'd rather music-making didn't come with so many strings attached. After the last recording session with PCO, Mr Lim (Yau) jokingly said "See you next time...Don't go and join another orchestra in the meantime." I didn't think much of it then, until I recently heard that Mr Lim Soon Lee (NUSSO/SYO conductor) just started his own Pacific Symphony Orchestra. My first thoughts were, "Not another one?!" There are not enough musicians to go round as it is, not to mention instruments such as the cor anglais, and it seems as if musicians are just being recycled from orchestra to orchestra.

Now even Singapore Lyric Opera isn't getting an (established, so to speak) orchestra for their Street Scenes concert, but getting freelance musicians by word of mouth or something.

Sometimes it feels like sitting on a carousel with a time bomb. But don't ask me what I mean by that. I don't know either. It's just an image that comes to mind when I think about the sticky situation.

Then again, who ever said that music making was supposed to be fun? If music is a reflection of life, then I suppose that all this is probably very characteristic of the general dissonance and dysfunction of the modern music scene.

Listen (c.f.) : Portishead's "Roads" and Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek".