Fresh Inc Festival 2013: Day 3 Recap

Day three of the festival started off on a hilarious and educational note!  (HA!  See what I did there?)

Our first workshop of the day was a rehearsal technique and and rehearsal coaching workshop.  Jenny and Crystal spent the first half of the workshop demonstrating and talking about ways to work through some issues that might arise, as well as various rehearsal techniques.  They also filled everyone in on 5HE's tardiness policy: when you're late to rehearsal, the next time you rehearse, you have to bring your ensemble members coffee.

The second half of the workshop, composers in residence Stacy and Dan lead a rehearsal coaching workshop; they demonstrated do's and don't's for composers coaching ensembles in rehearsal.  Their portion started with Dan demonstrating multiple things a composer should not do when coaching, and then Stacy demonstrated what to do.  While preparing for this workshop, most faculty members could be heard calling this the Goofus and Gallant rehearsal workshop. Fifth House Ensemble members stayed in the rehearsal room and had a rehearsal for Stacy Garrop's Frammenti, which they will perform at the Saturday, June 22 final performance at Nichols Hall in Evanston.

Before lunch, Nancy Bieshcke of Cedille Records stopped by to give a workshop on recording contracts.  She talked about some of the multiple ways artists might go about recording an album and also pointed out that there is no text book way to do it.

After some more rehearsals in the afternoon, Herine led a resume, bio writing, and interview skills workshop, complete with demonstrations of both a horrible and awful interview with help from Drew and Clark.  I think the best part of the demonstrations was when Herine asked each of them to teach her how to hold a bow.  Drew, the bad interviewer, thrust the bow into her hand and bossed her around like a surly teenager, and Clark's instructed Herine by having her make a bunny with her fingers.  It was awesomely adorable.

In the afternoon, Drew and Chris stopped by the composers forum for some demonstrations.  Drew talked about writing for young violinists, and Chris gave some demonstrations and explanations about various percussion instruments, sticks & mallets, and techniques.

We finished the evening off with some more rehearsals and a relatively early night.  Well, the schedule ended early, but I heard some pretty awesome practicing going on while walking through the music building at the end of the day.  On Day 4 we have our first participant salon night!  Pretty excited!!