New goals for a new season of the Pittsburgh Recorder Society

Sep 15, 2013 · 2 minute read · Comments
musicrecorderPittsburgh Recorder SocietyPittsburghJohann Sebastian BachDieterich Buxtehudeukulele

I was delighted to pay my membership dues at the first meeting of the new 2013-2014 season of the Pittsburgh Recorder Society. I hadn’t played recorder much since this July’s Mideast early music workshop, because of my having taken up ukulele the day after I got back from that; in fact, apart from that week-long workshop, I had not attended any meetings of the Pittsburgh Recorder Society since April (since I had to miss the May one on travel), and although there are meetings all through the summer as well, they only take place in the North Hills, which is kind of far for me.

As with the opening of the last season, we have exciting new plans for this season. And I have my own new plans in addition.

Introductions

We have some new members, which is always great, so we went around briefly introducing ourselves.

Raising our level

What is really inspiring, though, is the large number of formerly “new” people who joined during last season and have stayed with the group, so that we are in fact growing in numbers. Not only that, we have all improved considerably in the past year. Our director Fred is so excited by how far we have come that he has plans for us to work on harder music and improve our individual technique and ensemble playing.

Today we started working on music by Bach and Buxtehude: some lovely contrapuntal pieces. I look forward to our polishing up this stuff and really doing the old masters proud!

Bass recorder

In addition to continuing work on my technique and musicality, I decided that for this season, I would like to do play more on bass recorder. In the past year, I’ve gravitated toward deliberately volunteering to play tenor lines, to experience the unique position of bringing out the inner voice as well as making it blend harmoniously with the others. For the new season, I have an interest in focusing on the bass line, to experience being the rock solid underpinning of ensemble music. So I told Fred on my plan, and he’ll come up with some stuff for me to get into that.

Conclusion

I’ve been playing recorder for two and a half years now, starting in spring 2011. I am happy to be continuing on, with the companionship of everyone in the Pittsburgh Recorder Society! Making music together is really special.