ATG fun for the holiday weekend
Accordionists and
Teachers
Guild
(international)
Annual festival being held in Bloomington. Started last Thursday. At the old 
Thunderbird Hotel (now called Ramada Mall of America..but still complete with the original decorating.)
Much fun.
We played for the opening concert last night. JCS ‘introduced’ us, which amounted to her free opportunity to perform a magnificent exhibit of “leveling” in which she told the audience how she used to be the competition judge for each of us when we were “little.”
We played rather well considering the fiasco of last Monday’s rehearsal. KM, DO and SO didn’t arrive by 6:30 so we barely had an hour to do a last minute run through. Of course DO thinks we should do the Dalmation twice…because she wasn’t at Monday’s rehearsal. And when it comes to Dance of the Buffoons, she can’t decide if she should play on the bass or on her regular accordion. She takes off tempo wise and generally plays the whole thing as if she were playing alone. Then tried to blame us because “she was here at 6:20 but didn’t know where to go.” PLEASE.
Of course when it came to the performance she rushed like a bat out of hell for Dance of the Buffoons but we held it together. I never played some of those passages so well. That’s what adrenaline will do for you. It was very exhilerating. I’m not sure how musical it was.
Larry Malmberg, my first teacher, played at the concert too, with Mike Alongi from Chicago. These guys are pros like you don’t see pros today. Larry is 85. Doesn’t look a day over 68 and when they took the stage at 10pm it was his THIRD gig of the day. They played jazz standards for an hour along with Dennis on bass and a FABULOUS jazz drummer that I don’t know and didn’t catch his name.
Makes me want to practice more.
Stayed up waaaaaaay too late and had to be back there this morning to judge the competition. Of course, the categories went late and that made me and several of the students late for the festival orchestra rehearsal. Oh well. Sorry.
Beat feet back to GC to ‘check in’ (a.k.a. pick up paycheck.) Puttered around there for a while. Waited for VB to come and pick up her accordion book. S-the woman who does janiorial work for community service hours- called looking for TB, hoping for a ride to the bank. I offered to drive them, so went and got her and her husband. The bank was about 2 1/2 miles south of
their trailerhome. Right on the highway. Then she asked if I could drop them at the grocery store instead of home. About 3/4 mile north of their home. Also on the highway. They were going to buy their money orders to pay bills and a few groceries and then walk home.
It was 90 degrees and pretty humid by 3:00 so I felt like I was helping out some. She didn’t want to make me wait. She insisted they could walk home with the groceries. Probably, they wouldn’t be carrying too much.
It was odd to realize that after dropping them off I was basically going to do the same thing. Rush my check to the bank so I could pay bills and be broke again.
Same life. Just a better car.
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A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…
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Arranged Bokays 2007
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A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…
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Arranged Bokays 2007
— — —
A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…
-
Arranged Bokays 2007
