I've been pretty heads down in preparing our tax return over the last few weeks, and my wife is slowly melting down under the stress of doing too many university student recitals (hopefully a lesson that will make her more inclined to say "no" in the future....). Anyway, in the coming week, we have our last main chamber concert for the year, and this will be after my wife's nightmare period of student recitals.

... and earlier in the year, we had also booked in a smaller outreach concert a few days before in the middle of the week that we would both play at, in an effort to pick up a few more audience attendees in the lead up to our main concert.

Of course, that would mean that we would be using a different programming to the chamber concert... as people wouldn't want to hear the same thing a few days later, and we would also have different ensemble forces anyway!

Anyway, I decided that my wife should just take the day off and not prepare for yet another concert.... she insisted that she could do it, and it wouldn't be a problem... but even thought we could cobble together a programme from our existing backlog of learnt and performed repertoire, I thought that it would be better for her to rest and relax for a day or two before making a start on the main chamber concert.

And that means that I will have to cobble together a programme for the concert as a solo violin/viola/d'amore... now, earlier in the year, I had done a solo violin concert that was a 35 minute timing plus talking... and this time, I will have to fill 60 minutes (including talking). Not all the pieces that I played in the previous concert will work in the different space... we are talking about a small recital room instead of a largish church space... and the different space and acoustics means that some of the pieces that I played in the previous concert would be a recipe for public humiliation and disaster! Well, probably not... but it is best to program a concert so that you aren't shitting your pants as to how well the acoustics will help or hinder you!

So, I will have to find roughly another 25 minutes of music, as I can probably fill the rest with talking about the music and the instruments... and the previous concert had showcased a single particular violin, and this one will have the full range of my instruments at my disposal... so, it should be okay... I have more than enough in my existing repertoire that I can bring up to speed in a week.

But I will need to sit down choose them, and then time them so that it ends up being the appropriate length plus a little bit of arc planning as well. I'm now pretty sure that I will use two different violins, a viola, and a viola d'amore... and one of the pieces (the d'amore one) I will use as a test run for the concert later... yes yes, I shouldn't repeat... but it will be a first performance, and I want to know that it is possible for my mind and hands, and also to double check that there aren't any scordatura notation surprises that jump out badly during performance.

So, once this travel is over, I will head straight to the hotel and in the few hours before a different concert, I'll finalise the programme so that I can let the organisers know! Sigh... musician's life!

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