The calm after the musical storm – crashing after the year’s most hectic season

The December crush of activity has finally ebbed–only one more New Year’s gig to do this week, and I’m done with performances for a week or two.

After a solid six weeks of wall-to-wall gigs, I’m ready for a break. I’ve really dialed back the driving this year (becoming slightly less of a road warrior than before), but December has still been extremely busy, with Messiah and Nutcrackers scribbled into my calendar most days of the week.

Add in some horrendous snow (four really bad storms, all of them while driving up to Milwaukee!), and you’ve got a really exhausting mix of musical activity.

This is always a good time of year for providing blog fodder, and this year was no exception. Here were some my favorite winter/holiday posts from this season:

• Musical Mutiny Below Decks – Top 10 Wacky Things I’ve Seen in Orchestra Pit Playing
• Walking cats in the winter
• Deconstructing the Nutcracker
• On the road….again
• A week in the life part 1 – locked out in the cold
• Happy Holidays from an Hallelujah Wasteland
• Wintry Mess Hits Chicago

Here are a few classic blog posts about this time of year that I always enjoy revisiting:

• Humorous Mistakes (wacky Messiah screw-ups)
• Massive Musical Disaster in the Nutcracker Pit
• Freelancing + Snow = Pain

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I just played a Salute to Vienna concert at Symphony Center this final weekend of 2007, and while onstage I couldn’t help but remember the wacky flowchart we had on our stands for the Radetzky March last year at this same event. These concerts always cram too much music into too little time, and sometimes the conductor must resort to communicating last-minute changes to the group through flowcharts like this:

Would you feel confident knowing where to play after looking at this? I remember the whole orchestra exchanging uneasy glances when this landed on our stand last year!