[Tvcb] Really Terrible Orchestra

[Merrily & Bob Haas]

This group can't hold a candle to the Portsmouth Sinfonia:

http://home.comcast.net/~rehaas/portsmouth/portsmouth.mp3

More info at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_Sinfonia

Bob Haas
  -----Original Message-----
  From: tvcb.all-bounces at tvcb.org [mailto:tvcb.all-bounces at tvcb.org]On
Behalf Of Tim Roberts
  Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 9:53 AM
  To: TVCB List
  Subject: [Tvcb] Really Terrible Orchestra


  This news article comes through Chris Lewis, our venerable librarian.
This is a group of people who have truly learned not to take themselves too
seriously.  Their website, http://thereallyterribleorchestra.com/, is a
delight.  Take time to check out the typically British humor in the
biographies.  "Dr Colin Mumford, a child prodigy on the flute at the age of
six, has shown a continual and impressive decline in musical skills since
then."

--
Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.


  -------- Original Message -------- Date:  Fri, 14 Mar 2008 08:48:59 -0700
        From:  Chris Lewis <cclpiano at aracnet.com>
        To:  Tim Clarinet Section Leader <timr at probo.com>



Tim,
This from my strings teacher, thought you might share it with the band.
Chris
NY Times: Op-Ed Contributor

And the Band Played Badly
By ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH
Published: March 9, 2008

WHY should real musicians — the ones who can actually play their
instruments — have all the fun?

Some years ago, a group of frustrated people in Scotland decided that
the pleasure of playing in an orchestra should not be limited to
those who are good enough to do so, but should be available to the
rankest of amateurs. So we founded the Really Terrible Orchestra, an
inclusive orchestra for those who really want to play, but who cannot
do so very well. Or cannot do so at all, in some cases.

My own playing set the standard. I play the bassoon, even if not
quite the whole bassoon. I have never quite mastered C-sharp, and I
am weak on the notes above the high D. In general, I leave these out
if they crop up, and I find that the effect is not unpleasant. I am
not entirely untutored, of course, having had a course of lessons in
the instrument from a music student who looked quietly appalled while
I played. Most of the players in the orchestra are rather like this;
they have learned their instruments at some point in their lives, but
have not learned them very well. Now such people have their second
chance with the Really Terrible Orchestra.

The announcement of the orchestra's founding led to a great wave of
applications to join. Our suspicion that there were many people
yearning to play in an orchestra but who were too frightened or too
ashamed to do anything about it, proved correct. There was no
audition, of course, although we had toyed with the idea of a
negative audition in which those who were too good would be excluded.
This proved to be unnecessary. Nobody like that applied to join.

Some of the members were very marginal musicians, indeed. One of the
clarinet players, now retired from the orchestra for a period of re-
evaluation, stopped at the middle B-flat, before the instrument's
natural break. He could go no higher, which was awkward, as that left
him very few notes down below. Another, a cellist, was unfortunately
very hard of hearing and was also hazy on the tuning of the strings.
As an aide-mémoire, he had very sensibly written the names of the
notes in pencil on the bridge. This did not appear to help.

At the outset, we employed a professional conductor, which is a must
for anybody who is reading this and who is already planning to start
a similar orchestra.

Find somebody who is tolerant and has a sense of humor. The conductor
also has to be sufficiently confident to be associated with something
called the Really Terrible Orchestra; after all, it does go on the
résumé.

Our initial efforts were dire, but we were not discouraged. Once we
had mastered a few pieces — if mastered is the word — we staged a
public concert. We debated whether to charge for admission, but
wisely decided against this. That would be going too far.

So should we go to the other extreme and pay people to come? There
was some support for this, but we decided against it. Instead, we
would give the audience several free glasses of wine before the
concert. That, it transpired, helped a great deal.

We need not have worried. Our first concert was packed, and not just
with friends and relations. People were intrigued by the sheer
honesty of the orchestra's name and came to see who we were. They
were delighted. Emboldened by the rapturous applause, we held more
concerts, and our loyal audience grew. Nowadays, when we give our
annual concert at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the hall is full to
capacity with hundreds of music-lovers. Standing ovations are two-a-
penny.

"How these people presume to play in public is quite beyond me,"
wrote one critic in The Scotsman newspaper. And another one simply
said "dire." Well, that may be so, but we never claimed to be
anything other than what we are. And we know that we are dire;
there's no need to state the obvious. How jejune these critics can be!

Even greater heights were scaled. We made a CD and to our
astonishment people bought it. An established composer was
commissioned to write a piece for us. We performed this and recorded
it at a world premiere, conducted by the astonished composer himself.
He closed his eyes. Perhaps he heard the music in his head, as it
should have been. This would have made it easier for him.

There is now no stopping us. We have become no better, but we plow on
regardless. This is music as therapy, and many of us feel the better
for trying. We remain really terrible, but what fun it is. It does
not matter, in our view, that we sound irretrievably out of tune. It
does not matter that on more than one occasion members of the
orchestra have actually been discovered to be playing different
pieces of music, by different composers, at the same time. I, for
one, am not ashamed of those difficulties with C-sharp. We persist.
After all, we are the Really Terrible Orchestra, and we shall go on
and on. Amateurs arise — make a noise.

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the forthcoming novel "The
Miracle at Speedy Motors."

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