My next big project is a trip to Philadelphia. Paul and I will be performing CHROMA on April 29, on the Delaware County Community College’s Performing Arts Series.
When I booked this concert, it made a ton of sense. I was very proud of my CHROMA programming, and the video project that went along with the recital was exciting, and popular. I loved the repertoire and had worked incredibly hard on it. The five full and partial performances I gave last spring made me confident that I could play the program over and over, and I wanted to make the most of that preparation.
Since then, of course, I have prepared a new program. My Moveable Feast performance, with all new difficult repertoire, had been intended for January and February, but I wound up doing my final performances in late March instead. So effectively, I am just beginning to practice CHROMA now, and will be performing it in 3 weeks. Which seems like kind of a bad idea.
But it’s fun! It’s going really well. Turns out that one year is the perfect amount of time to let this music rest. I still understand it, deeply and well, but I have enough critical distance to revisit some of my choices and rework them. The technique is a little rusty, but there are fewer problems than I was fearing. I have a few spots that I need to touch up, but they don’t feel unfamiliar – just hard – and I’ve identified them and spent good time on them already.
Best of all, I’m not the least bit bored with it, and I certainly was last year after all those shows. Three weeks ago I was kicking myself for not making this East Coast performance another repeat of A Moveable Feast, but the moment I played the final note on March 24th I was happy to be done with that concert. I imagine that by next year at this time I’ll be missing it again – maybe I’ll try to duplicate this plan – but after living with the music for the months necessary to perform well I didn’t really want to do it any more. My favorite part of playing a hard recital is playing it, but my second favorite part is retiring it afterwards.