Gong Orchestra...

[ateolf]

So yeah, it was the big Nakatani Gong Orchestra performance yesterday. First it was the full rehearsal early in the afternoon. I thought it went pretty well. Seemed like this group had it together even better than last year's. Maybe that was just because I thought it was going easier and better for me personally. So we practiced a few hours. Then there was some pizza after that. Then I went and picked Mary Beth up to bring her back. Tatsuya Nakatani played a solo set first. That was pretty incredible as always. Then it was the Gong Orchestra. I thought it mostly went well. There was one part I'm pretty sure I fucked something up badly but I'm not sure what. Everyone else had stopped and I was still going. He was cupping his hands over his mouth and half-shouting something but I couldn't make it out. Then other players were turned around looking at me. He'd never done that in practice where he cupped his hand over his mouth (which I think made it harder to hear him anyway as well as blocking his mouth to read his lips). Then I thought I heard him say "stop" (though Jill later said she thought he'd said "don't stop"). But I'm not really sure. I feel I either kept going after I was supposed to have stopped or someone else stopped that wasn't supposed to have or I was supposed to have kept going and not eventually stopped and maybe he was trying to give me a different signal. Anyway yeah, not sure but I think I did something wrong in that spot anyway (for the rest of it I think I did well!...). After the performance was over, he made a crying pantomime. Yikes. Later he was nice about it, just saying personally it didn't reach the level he was hoping for but the audience liked it and we did fine. But yeah, it was a little sad disappointing Tatsuya! It wasn't as crazy packed as last year. They did bring out a ton more chairs, so I don't think it was as big a difference as it seemed but I'm not able to crunch any actual numbers. Eric seemed a little frustrated about it and was saying that if he came back again he wasn't promoting it again, like he'd reached a limit for what he was able to do. It was also a holiday weekend so I hope no one feels too bad about it on a turnout front. Anyway, it was a ton of fun to be able to play and bow the gong again. Oh, at one point Jill and I had kind of a duet. They were on the smallest and I was on the largest gong and we had a spot where it was just us two rolling the mallets and that was cool. Between the rehearsal and actual show, I also picked up some merch. I finally got a t-shirt of his. He didn't have XL but the XXL seemed to run small so I got one of those. Every time before he's been out of my size and we always seem to get it towards the end of the tour so I figured if it fit okay I should jump for it. And I got a couple cds: Kris Tiner • Tatsuya Nakatani: The Magic Room and Sara(.Es) & Tatsuya Nakatani: Creature in a Forest. Also, I forgot to mention that at the house show on Saturday I picked up a cd from Nonconnah: Unicorn Family. I guess that's it for now, back to work and stuff.