Ma Mere l'Oye

Two and a half weeks of rehearsal sounds like a lot of time, but when you are preparing six programs, there doesn’t seem to be enough time to go around. The vast majority of time has been spent on repertoire for the first half of Tour with second half works slipped in here and there. There are only four rehearsals remaining, and one or two pieces for the second half have yet to be rehearsed.

It is a delicate balance; adequate rehearsal time to achieve the high level of performance expected without exceeding the musicians’ endurance and ability to absorb the vast amount of material.

The first Tour concert isn’t really the beginning of Tour. It is the culmination of a lot of planning, preparation, and hard work, and I don’t mean two and a half weeks of Tour rehearsals. This tour began last year, probably somewhere around the time we departed on the 2006 Tour. There are many people working behind the scenes whose job is done before we pick up the Tour folders; Andy Linden, our Tour Director, our Public Affairs Office, the Tour Coordinators, and the Library, just to name a few.

Take the library, for example. When we pick up our folders at the end of August, we are picking up the results of several months worth of effort.

In June, the Library received six programs from Colonel Colburn and Captain Rakers. Much of the music will be found in the library, but other pieces must be acquired through rental or purchase, and often pieces need to be arranged or transcribed. Each program (A, B, or C) is handled by a team of two librarians, one for the first half and one for the second half.

In July the librarians are busy preparing each piece, making sure each director has a copy of the score and that at least one original of each part is retained by the library. During the first week or two of August, the folders are built. Mike Ressler starts looking for volunteers from the Tour Band to work as Tour Librarians. By the end of August, all the folders are ready to distribute to the musicians.

The program roughs are formatted into a finished concert program format. By the time we sit down to our first rehearsal, the programs have already been distributed to the Tour Sponsors.

On Thursday, we had the Tour Librarian briefing. I’ve been a Tour Librarian since 1994, my second tour with the Band. I’ve graduated from passing out folders and taking care of scores to being Mother Goose, or Library SNCOIC.

This year my flock of librarians will be Ellen Dooley, handling the conductors’ scores, and Gina Guhl, Lauren Miner, Jennifer Paul, and Paul Mergen taking care of the folders and collecting programs.