Rehearsal Process


Rehearsal set-up
As a regular chamber musician, I generally like to rehearse as an ensemble at least 2 hours a week. Until July 2017, most of my chamber experience was with brass quintet or dectet so starting up Rose Brass Trio highlighted some new challenges. The most obvious of these is that due to the reduced number of musicians in the group, each individual is playing almost constantly in order to fill out the texture. There is very little opportunity to rest and therefore stamina becomes an issue because we all tire much faster! 

Rehearsing in 123

In September we tried a mixture of 1 and 2 hour rehearsals to see what would work best. In terms of stamina, 1 hour was the most realistic. However, when you factor in set-up and time talking about the pieces and musical desires, it can be difficult to get much done before needing to pack away again! As we all found we were very busy particularly towards the end of the autumn term, 1 hour rehearsals were easier to fit in the diary but we just had to ensure we were actively productive and punctual, which didn’t always happen. Over Christmas, we evaluated how our rehearsals had been going and concluded that we needed to prioritise more rehearsals and make every effort to use our time as efficiently as possible. This involved more planning of rehearsal content and a conscious effort to each be punctual and actively engaging with the music by listening, practising individual parts and discussing musical ideas together. We also still hadn't finalised the repertoire and needed to choose a couple more well-known tunes that were easy to arrange and practice in the time left. 

Rehearsing in the church.

Although in January we were able to have a few 2 hour rehearsals, we then faced the challenge of scheduling them around CoLab. We were all in different projects with very different timetables, so we had to revert to 1 hour rehearsals again as that was the only time enabled by our respective projects! On reflection, had we had more time during the last week before the concert, we could have produced a much more polished performance, particularly on the more well-known pieces, as noted in the review by Peter Crawford.

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