So, the restaurant gig happened last night. A big thank-you to everyone who suggested repertoire and how I should approach preparing for the gig. It did turn out that I was there to make a pleasant background noise, and diners mostly treated me with benign neglect, which was perfectly fine.
My playing spot turned out to be right under the air-conditioning vent, which meant cold fingers and tuning problems. The restaurant was supposed to open at 6:30, giving us half an hour to set up and prepare from 6-6:30, but some corporate Japanese big spenders arrived at 6 and insisted on being served, and taking the table next to the playing spot, so we couldn't really spend any time doing the setup. The guy arranging the gig spent the entire first set and half of the second set fiddling with his microphone and amp, which hadn't been used in five years and hence weren't in a mood to behave. After various feedback noises and buzzing, during which I tried my best to keep playing, we perhaps got about ten minutes of discreetly-amplified playing. Apart from that it went quite well. Didn't get fed, but did get lots of bread and olive oil and warm water between sets. The guy arranging the gig, himself a classically-trained singer, insisted on programme notes. How does one write programme notes for an assortment of short dances from Caroso and Negri, with bits of da Milano and Vivaldi (*tip of hat to Rockford Mjos*)? So I told him that these were mostly going to be dances, with the names and dates of Caroso and Negri's publications. Somehow in the final programme sheet, this got listed as 'Italian Folk Dances', and 'About the Programme' went like this: "Lutes are said to have been played as early as the 7th century, and its various permutations have been played in diverse Eastern and Western cultures from Ancient Greece to Byzantium, Egypt, Persia, India and China. It is the favorite instrument of Queen Elizabeth I and its music has entertained knights and fair maidens in the taverns of medieval times.". Knights. Fair maidens. Taverns of medieval times. It's like being in the SCA. I don't know how aristocratic dances became folk dances. I suspect if the writer hadn't had any musical training at all, the final product would have been even more hilarious. Anyone else with anecdotes of mediaeval clichés to report? Or are these too frequent and numerous to merit mention? :D Edward Chrysogonus Yong [email protected] To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
