What Fall?

November is supposed to be a time of leaden skies, biting winds and chilly leaf kicking followed by cozy soups and teas. At least that's how I remember it, but we  have temperatures licking the mercury just below the 100 mark today, and the heat is going to drive us all mad. 

The AC in my room-with-a view is powered by an inadequate cable that can not handle the extra draw on a day like this. I waited till the last minute to flip the switch to "cool".  The little mobile given to me by art students last year with cutout shapes of musical instruments and symbols that hangs from the ceiling began to twitch in the tepid air. But as the PAK orchestra came in from PE with red faces and soaked shirts, I knew we were in for it.

The AC WAS supposedly fixed a couple weeks ago, remember?

To cool off today we listened to excerpts from Brahms 1st Symphony, Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Tchaikowsky's Festival Overture to 1812. These pieces are all interwoven with Christmas tunes in a piece called "Santa at the Symphony" which we have, quite frankly, been having a gas learning. The piece is too clever for words, and finishes with a bombastic Common-time version of Silent Night overlaying the triumphant eighth-note fanfares of the 1812 Overture.

Once we had listened to these little snippets, we launched into the work on the piece. I keep wondering if anyone can hear us from anywhere else on the campus. We really are isolated, and there is usually a bulldozer churning around on the construction site during our class. But if they could have heard us today, they would have figured that our brains had finally gotten fried. I'm not sure they would have been wrong!

What fun we had waking the dead with the bass drum, blasting Silent Night like some violin carollers from hell. Saxophones took up the line French Horns would play if we had such beasts, and they did so admirably.The trumpets bravely found the high notes with safety in companionship. The flutes learned how to trill on a high D, and the strings learned how to play a tremolo on their low D. The bass drum found beat 1 and 3- finally- and with 3 minutes left to go in the class no one squawked when I said, "Okay, all the way from the beginning!"

Everyone was a little crazy today, me included. I hope the weather cools down. But something is happening to this group that might be partly BECAUSE OF the crazy heat, tight quarters and middle-aged, hot-flashing teacher. Focus, artistry, technique, and fun. It doesn't get any better. 76 degrees would be better than 86, but the music happens anyway.