Recovering

It has been a very busy week, complicated not by the lingering effects of URI #5, but by a reaction to one of the treating medications. I made it through two three-hour dress rehearsals for the church Passion play on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, but spent the wee hours of Friday in the emergency room with severe total body muscle cramps. After stopping the med and eating a lotta lotta potassium through the day I made it through the performance on Friday night, then two performances on Saturday. Performances were two hours, without intermission, and very little playing downtime.

I was very grateful for my Alexander Technique training this week, because my muscles were very twitchy and tried to spasm each time I contracted one "too far". All of that practice "letting go" and "doing less" really paid off. And I'm finally feeling better - the URI is gone, the cramping stopped, and I'm back to exercising and normal activities.

It was quite a production, and I'm glad I was able to play. Huge. About 35 in the orchestra, a cast of over 100, and lots of back stage crew and production engineers. Plus a donkey and at least four goats. We ran into a girl carrying one of the latter around the church on Saturday between performances - two weeks old, and totally cute. She (the goat) and my FIL carried on quite the conversation - I didn't know he spoke goat. Usually the goats rested in large carriers off-stage, and even so were the center of attention.

DH snapped a few photos for me on Saturday afternoon - very few, because he didn't want to be flashing during the performance. This photo was taken as the orchestra members got situated beforehand. There were 12 strings in two rows on the left - I am sitting below and to the right of the green exit sign. The bright line to my right (left in the pic) is my neighbor's stand light. There were two percussionists, one on snares, the other tymp, xylophone, gong, and everything else, and two guitarists in front of us, then two rows (6 or so stands) of brass and woodwinds lowest down, and to the right in the picture. Oh, and the keyboard closest to the stage.



And here is the tiniest video clip, where you can hear a bit of music and see one set and the "choir" on stage - plus a lot of shadowy heads in the audience. Sorry, It's all he got, but it does give you an idea of the scope of the production.