Bass Blog

Michael Hovnanian formerly played bass with an orchestra located in a large midwestern city.

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Friday, February 29, 2008

New York

the tour in pictures

Rather than entertaining with poorly written prose, I decided to substitute poorly taken photographs instead.

Waiting for the bus. Time 6:30 AM Temperature 24 degrees (Fahrenheit).
So far this feels more like a beastly fishing trip than a tour.




My attempt to avoid traveling with the orchestra backfired when I ended up on the same flight as Pierre Boulez. Fortunately, the Maestro kept the idle chitchat to a minimum.





View from the N train to Manhattan.



The red staircase. Carnegie Hall has poor facilities, including this long narrow stairwell for bassists to climb. It is only a matter of when I’m going to trip and fall down this stairway.




Access to the stage is only through one doorway, stage right. Below are some of my colleagues lugging instruments across to our position, stage left.




My stand partner.



Tedious rehearsal of material we rehearsed and played all last week.



Waiting in the wings.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Attention!

nocynic said...

So that's the verdict on Carnegie--poor access and poor facilities. What an awful place to play! That's like slamming FDR because he had a slow time in the 40 yard dash. Are you sure these are the most relevant criteria, Mike?
fondly,
Max

Michael Hovnanian said...

Max,

I don’t recall saying anything about whether Carnegie is a nice place to play music or not. The poor facilities are a fact though, at least IMO, and something that may be less well known than Carnegie’s widely accepted reputation for having fine acoustics.

Should anyone who is a liberal feel compelled to suppress the fact FDR probably didn’t run a quick 40-yard dash? The fact he was slow doesn’t make him a bad president and is certainly nothing to hide. Sending Japanese-American citizens to prison camps is another matter altogether…