Training & First Performance

So I've officially been here in Calgary for a week now.

Right now, we're staying on campus at the University of Calgary, which turns its dorms into hotels over the summer. I'm living in a 4 bedroom suite with Matt (violinist, from Manchester, England), Jason (violinist, from Williamsport, PA) and Hidayat (guitarist, from Vancouver, British Columbia)--the other two guys in the group, Charlie (drummer) and Tim (bass guitarist), are from Calgary, so they're both staying at their homes while we're here. The four girls Alicia (Topeka, KS), Annette (Hannover, Germany), Kristina (Winnipeg, Manitoba), and Sarah (Nashville, TN) are all in a suite just across the hall. I'd take some pictures of the living room

and kitchen, but they're not too clean right now, so I'll try to put some up in a later post. In the meantime, on the left is a picture of my somewhat messy bedroom, and below it is the view from my window here in Calgary. While I've been here, my days have been spent rehearsing with Matt (the senior violinist who is finishing up his 8th year with the group) and Annette (the newest member--she joined earlier in the spring), and then watching the group perform three 45-minute sets at the Calgary Stampede in the afternoon/evening. Though I arrived here with nearly all of my music fully memorized, all of my time with Matt is spent learning the choreography to go with the songs, which is turning out to be quite the challenge. Having had years of experience in musical theatre, I was thinking that learning the moves wouldn't be too difficult, but never before have I been asked to hold my violin in strange positions and play incredibly difficult music at the same time! Fortunately, Matt, with his wisdom and years of experience, is able to show me how I can make the moves even more sharp, clean, and exciting.

I have had a couple of rehearsals with the full group (all 9 musicians) and they have been both eye-opening and inspiring. Though I've been floored by the Barrage shows for years, I never fully realized how talented each musician was until I've been in a rehearsal setting, seeing each noodle away on his or her instrument between runs of songs and watching the group attack the music with precision and ease. At the same time, it has been situations like these which show me how much more work I have ahead of me to get each tune fully under my belt. For a beginner in Barrage, the best way to learn could only be described as sink-or-swim: I get time with Matt in the morning to learn moves for a couple of songs, and then I'm thrown into performance in the afternoon. Thus far, I've played on three different sets, performing a few tunes on each set and then switching out with Matt to let him perform the rest. Usually, in any sort of theatrical performance, I'm accustomed to having weeks or months of rehearsal prior to a first performance, but here, that's not exactly the norm.

Fortunately, the vibe at the Stampede is very relaxed, so it makes it a great place in which to start learning how to perform with the group. Since I'm being slowly rotated into the show, I get a lot of time to watch the performances and observe the group as a whole.

Here are some pictures of the group en route to the stage and also during a performance:

And here are some pictures from my "debut" with the group on July 4th!

[The vertical picture to the left is when I played my first big-ish solo in "The Show Goes On," after which I received a smattering of applause from the audience!]

I've since performed in two more sets, and I've already signed a handful of CDs!

We'll be leaving shortly for our shows today at the Stampede, so I've got to wrap up the post. I'll try and get some more pictures up sometime later in the week.

-Taylor

P.S. This is my first post with pictures and I'm experiencing some problems with formatting, so if it looks strange on your screen, I apologize. I'm still trying to work out the kinks of how to format the pictures in the text.