[MusicTlk] Scrambling to Learn Music for Community Orchestra

[Catherine Getchell]

Hi all,

I'd love your collective wisdom on this. I'm just an amateur musician, but
I'm very active in a community band, orchestra, and brass quintet. Lately,
the orchestra conductor has been choosing a lot of rental music rather than
music we already have in our pretty vast library. Since it's a community
orchestra, they don't like to order the music until a few weeks before the
first rehearsal, and often it doesn't arrive until a week or two beforehand.
I'm a one-on-a-part player (trumpet), so I don't have the option of taking
my time to learn the music while the rest of the section plays it. It's got
to be ready by the first rehearsal.  Music Braille isn't really an option
for me in real-time because the trumpet requires both hands. And I'm faster
at learning it by ear anyway.

 

This is proving more and more challenging as there is more and more rental
music. The timeframe also often coincides with new music distributed by the
other groups I play with, so my ability to stop everything and focus just on
orchestra music for a couple weeks is limited.

 

I have asked the librarian to work with the publishers to at least get my
part ahead of time, or to order all the parts a little early, but I don't
get a response to my emails to him. I've let the conductor know about the
situation. The question I have for the group is: What is a reasonable ask in
terms of getting music ahead of time? Ideally I'd like to have it all a
couple months ahead so that I can "put it in the queue" so-to-speak, instead
of having to drop everything and focus on orchestra music. I'm thinking of
telling the group that if I don't have all the music a month ahead of time
minimum, they should find a sub for me for that show. But I'm afraid that if
I do this, they may decide that it's just easier to find a sighted player,
even if they're not as strong. Has anyone had success in advocating for
getting music ahead of time? Any tips and tricks? And what amount of lead
time is reasonable to ask for? Thanks!

Catherine