Word

A report by Alessandro Bruno

Rolo, Friday 28/10/05

People like me, coming from the south, arrived late due to the fact that we were approaching a bank holiday combined with a weekend, which makes a 4 days-off in a row; so everybody in Italy was going somewhere, trains were delayed…

We had dinner at 20.30. Alessandro Papa arrived from Napoli at 21.00, a new entry for this Circle, he attended the Intro in Kiel last summer and he’s a friend of Massimo and Vincenzo, that’s great.

Everybody who was expected, was there so we had our inaugural meeting at 21.45.

8 people: Stefano Simioni, Aldo Garuti, Mirco Revenoldi (a very young boy who attended the Intro in Cesclans last Jannuary and another circle meeting in April), R. Deiana, R. Duse, Alessandro Papa, Filippo Guerini, and myself. Adriano Clera will arrive tomorrow (he’s on duty tonight), and Attilio Songia just lost his mother and the funeral will take place tomorrow.

We introduced ourselves and declare our personal specific aim for this weekend: clarity enhancement. I remind the Circle the public performance we’ll have on Sunday afternoon.

Back in the ballroom few minutes later with guitars:

• Circulation, any note
• After few rounds I suggest to leave the concern for the fret board and allow the eyes to get a wider sight and the ears to listen to what was going on. The situation changed dramatically showing at the same time the immense amount of work that could be done with this.
• The Eye Of The Needle: a little initial disaster
• Somebody called out Blockhead: first note wrong, I stopped it on the second one
• Askesis: very shaky, and only 4 players
• Third Relation: poor but possible
• Day Break: we split to let the new ones get the parts; this is workable
• I introduced the parts of the first section of Revive The World, in the old days they where used by Tony as an endurance exercise, so the GC sergeant is back!
• Coupe de grace a short circulation of a Kodaly’s carillon introduced by Aldo.

We acknowledge the completion of our evening/night of work and go to sleep at 1.30

I sit on the bed for a while to write this and the schedule for tomorrow.

Rolo, Saturday 29/10/05

7.00 – Rise
7.30 – Sitting
8.15 – Breakfast
9.30 – Warm up: right hand, alternate picking on the A string at different speed (increasing); cross picking combined with a counting/DofA exercise; left hand, Revive The World enduring exercise.
10.30 – break
10.45 Work in the Circle: focus on the possible full group pieces: Alessandro tells us that in Kiel he was introduced to TEOTN, Thrak (only the thraking section) and All Or Nothing (we didn’t have it in the set so far); so we begin with some preparatory work with the vamping; then through Asturias and Invocation; section work on TEOTN.
11.45 – break
12.00 – Back in the Circle: we split in 2 groups to present the missing parts of Day Break; through the for of All Or Nothing with Filippo and I playing the lead, my performance of it is mediocre but I cheerfully accept the challenge.
13.00 – Lunch; I ask for comments and observations about the morning work; few comments, no observations. We don’t need to ask for volunteers for washing up.
14.45 – Work in the circle continues: Fire Place, the circulation at the end sucks; we focus on circulations, D Maj circulations, Kodaly circulation…
16.00 – Tea time: Adriano arrives; he settles in pretty quickly, we are tired.
16.45 – Alessandro and R. Duse set up the PA while we clean up the dining room
17.00 – More work: Adriano’s contribution is obvious on different levels, now we miss Attilio even more… We go through the pieces we’ve been working on plus Askesis and Third Relation which now sound acceptable, we give a try to Calliope but it’s not good enough and we drop it
17.45 – Break
18.00 – We’re back in the Circle: 2 people are off to prepare dinner so we look at small group pieces like Funeral March For A Marionette and Where Is The Nurse?
19.00 – Dinner: Filippo, Adriano and I, thinking to Attilio who’s the forth members of this sub-group called “Le Quaglie” (The Quails), perform Bicycling To Afghanistan, honourable performance although the piece is not there yet; baked soy chunks with potatoes, very yummy; I ask for comments/observations about the day, this turned into a conversation about the development of the Circle over one and a half year of activity, different vision of this matter then a question arose: “why are we doing all this?”, I suggest to hold the question; suddenly and unexpectedly Silence jumps in, catching all of us in the moment with no exception, remarkable event, specially for a bunch of noisy Italians as we are…
21.30 – Circle with guitars; still few pieces for the final test, plus Intergalactic Boogie Express and Hope which we didn’t play at all yet; I feel energised and when we play I realize that this true possibly for everybody; the sound is tight and powerful, I’m impressed.
23.00 – Break; I write down the set list
23.30 – Dressed rehearsal; few weak spots, mostly the circulations; there’s still energy around, we could keep going…
01.30 – We go to sleep

Rolo, Sunday 30/10/05

07.00 – Rise
07.30 – Sitting
08.15 – Breakfast
09.00 – Warm up; I present the pattern of the tremolo; then the chord sequence (28 bars); then some more Revive The World endurance for the left hand
10.00 – Break
10.20 – Circulations: A Harm minor, Kodaly, Fireplace
11.00 – break
11.15 – Circle: we review the thraking part of Blockhead (previously open to the full group), and the vamping on All Or Nothing
12.00 – Packing plus resetting the house
12.30 – brunch
13.30 – Final meeting; after some comments about the weekend so far I presented the upcoming GC activities worldwide for 2006. Lunlunta is calling!
14.00 – Everything by the door
14.30 – setting up plus sound check; the venue is a small old church in the middle of the village, outside there’s the annual fair going on; the only space available as a green room is behind the altar, a small space packed with furniture. We set up and sound check briefly, then we collect in the green room going through the set list:

Circulation D Maj
Invocation
Askesis
Day Break
Bicycling To Afghanistan
All Or Nothing
The Eye Of The Needle
Funeral March For A Marionette
Circulation A Harmonic minor (thumbs)
Third Relation
Fireplace
Kodaly’s Carillon
Intergalactic Boogie Express
Where Is The Nurse?
Hope
Thrak

Encores: Blockhead
Asturias

I make the call to the Muse and we walk in.

15.30 – Performance; the sound of the church was very good, natural reverberation but not too long or too deep, we used the PA just to enhance a bit the volume (we’re lucky to have Alessandro with us who’s a professional sound man). A bit more then half of the church was filled up with people, occasionally some of them would go in and out opening the door to the fair din which was disturbing, but we managed to keep the focus pretty well, also the way we recovered from mistakes showed a certain degree of maturity… The audience received it very well; they came to us to tell us they were delighted. The power of the Tradition speaks through us, the less dull we are, the better It speaks to the Audience; in this sense there has been a step forward, even compare to the last performance last month in Monte Marino.

16.30 – After the encores we encircle in the green room, acknowledge and embrace the whole weekend, thank for the help received (an incredible amount of help!), and I declare the weekend completed.