I played in the band at a bar mitzvah last Saturday. Jim, the clarinetiest in the JCC klezmer band, had been asked by one of his neighbors to get a band together for the occasion. He spoke to Barry, the leader of the JCC band, who asked me to participate. So the three of us were up there on the stage at Temple Emeth in South Brookline doing chassidic, klezmer, and Israeli songs. For the past four weeks we had been rehearsing for a half hour before the regular JCC klezmer band meetings. Even that wasn’t enough time to practice all the songs that Barry gave us. Most of Barry’s music is just the C lead sheet. I have to transpose those as I go, unless I enter the tune into Finale, have the program transpose it to the trumpet key, and print out a part. Of course, when I do that I have a nice clearly printed part in the right key, rather than a splotchy xerox of a handwritten part in the wrong key — but there were too many to enter them all.
Well, we did some songs that I had to sight read and transpose from those splotchy xeroxes, and I suspect there were guests thinking, “where did they get that trumpet player? He’s terrible!” We did some songs that I knew pretty well and I suspect there were guests thinking, “that band rocks!” We did “Bei Mir Bist du Schoen” with me on vocals, and I bet there were some people thinking, “Oh my, do people still know that song? It takes me back 50 years!”
Mostly, I’m not used to playing for that long at a stretch. It was tiring but fun.