Coda 3

Coda 3 is over, marking the end of yet another year as a band member.

Pretty standard stuff pre-concert, moving stuff from RI to VCH, including a wheel-less bass drum to make life difficult for people. Short soundcheck of only 1 hour though.

Generally, I was quite nervous for this, as I felt we had not really prepared enough. Further, ticket sales seemed quite dismal. Fortunately, it seems that the fine tradition of ungodly high door sales at VCH was upheld, and the concert hall was reasonably full.

Before the concert, they showed photos of the past batches of RI, RJC and RGS bands. Seeing my own batch photo brought back many memories of better times.

The opening piece of the concert was March and Procession of Bacchus, one that I'd done before on the VCH stage. This also brought back memories of Prometheum XI, although Quan Hui's interpretation of the piece was vastly different from Mr Oura's.

The next piece was by Sze Han, Foster in my Mind. We did this one quite well, I think, and I love Foster's melodies such as Old Folks at Home.

Wenrong's solo in Gabriel's Oboe was nice. I've always admired him as a player, both his tone and technique are unbeatable. However, I still fail to see the logic of a trumpet solo in a song called Gabriel's Oboe.

Peterloo Overture, our main piece for the first half, was pretty decent. Not the best, but I think the slow parts were really nice.

During the interval, I met quite a few people from the audience, such as Michael and Jia Wei. Nice to see them there. The interval was short though, barely 15 minutes.

Global Variations is a nice piece, and I think we did pretty well for it. The French national anthem, although one of the most parodied in the world, was nice to play.

My first solo in an actual concert came during the ensembles, where the saxes played the theme from Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Apparently it was too soft, so when I get the recording I shall ask Shuotian to boost the bass by about 10x

Metro Gnome is quite cute. Difficult to play the piece cleanly, but I think we did well enough.

Othello was our best piece for the night, I think. It's really very emotional and expressive, and I think we brought that across nicely.

There's very little I can comment on the encore piece, I will survive. You can't do much with an encore, but for 1 week of prac we did alright.

All in all, the concert was quite a success. I was glad to play in VCH again after 363 days (since Coda 2). On a personal level, however, I was quite disappointed that my close friends, such as Chester, Paul, Zi Guang, Shuyi, Bertrand etc were unable to make it for the concert. I think that this kind of lessened the satisfaction that can be derived from a good concert, and I think that my personal drive to do well was also lessened slightly.

However, on a band level, we did really well I think, apparently even beating the past 2 concerts for sales. Musically, the band did well, and Sze Han and Quan Hui have been great conductors. I think that Coda 4 should be even better, and personally I would like to be involved in the committee if I get the chance.

This year in terms of band has been quite a full one. A Tempo, SYF, JC Band Fest, and Coda have been the major events, and I think all of them have standards far higher than what I am used to. I think JC Band Fest and Coda in particular have caused me to improve tremendously.

Time to look forward to next year I guess, with Play 08, A Tempo XIX (I'm wondering why A Tempo in 2005 was XV while in 2007 was XVIII), an overseas trip and Coda 4 all coming up.