The American Ragtime Ensemble Recording

Sunday morning. Teaching day again! It seems to be recording session season for me. A few days ago I did a rehearsal with David Reffkin and his American Ragtime Ensemble. He is a ragtime specialist who does a radio show every Monday night on KUSF, I believe it is. He is a very good violinist with eclectic tastes in music, and he's always fun to work with, although he makes me nervous...

He sent us the music about a month in advance, and then he called me two or three times and left messages to make sure that I was practicing the music. He's so funny! He wants to get the best performance out of everyone, and he will do things like that to make sure you practice. David is very organized and I think he is used to dealing with flaky musicians that would just show up to the gig without any idea of what is going on.

So anyway, I went to the rehearsal Thursday in San Francisco. It was in a little church. I was there an hour early, because I am paranoid about getting lost, bad with directions, and also because David is so paranoid about anything going wrong that I am scared to death to displease him...So the whole three hour rehearsal was on two little ragtime pieces that have been arranged for a small ensemble. We went over and over and over these pieces. They were sounding pretty good. They are actually kind of cool pieces with lots of dissonances and lots of layers of interesting things going on.

So David was happy, in the end, thank god! The actual recording session itself is this Tuesday in Berkeley. It should be fun...

Later this afternoon I am going to check out a recording studio here in Alameda, to hopefully book some dates to record a new cello CD. The last CD that I made of my own music, "Night of a Thousand Rains" was ten years ago. It's high time for some new original music, which I have been writing.

Well, off to my students and to another delicious cup of Joe!