Memorial Day weekend, couple of small gigs

Saturday evening I had a small gig at a church talent-show fundraiser event. The whole talent show contained quite an incredible variety of different acts, and all were delightful. I contributed a brief performance on the Native American flute, playing the piece “Whippoorwill” by the great R. Carlos Nakai. A strange thing happened when I started to play this. The tune started out sounding strangely higher in pitch than usual, although the intervals seemed kind of okay. I was bewildered but kept stubbornly playing it for a little while because I had no idea what the problem was. I think I played the first four measures like this, with the flute sounding very strange and the only thing I could think was a great big WTF?? (though fortunately I did not actually blurt this out!). Finally I couldn’t ignore the problem anymore and I stopped playing and looked the flute up and down as if it were some totally alien thing I had never seen before. Embarrassed, I apologized to the audience for the “flute malfunction,” and told them I would have to start the piece over. I positioned my fingers very carefully on the flute and blew the beginning note a couple of times to test the sound. It sounded good, so I went ahead and played the whole piece. I thought I played it pretty well and I had no further problems with it. I think what must have happened at the beginning is that I must have placed my fingers incorrectly somehow, and I may have placed one finger over something that I thought in my haste was a finger-hole but which is not actually a finger-hole. This particular flute has a little triangular-shaped depression on the top of it near the finger holes, an ornament that I think is supposed to suggest the shape of an arrow-head or something. I think in my nervousness at the beginning I may have placed my finger over this little ornament by mistake, instead of a finger-hole, and all my fingers were actually placed off by one hole! It’s the only thing I can think of that may have caused this odd problem. But when I started over and was more careful about my finger placement it sounded fine. Several people came up to me afterward and complimented me on the piece and remarked on how beautiful and evocative it was. So all turned out well after all.

Sunday was commencement at Cornell, and CMEMME had a gig playing at the commencement festivities for the Cornell Dept. of Near Eastern Studies. It was a smaller-than-usual CMEMME contingent because several of the ensemble’s members had already left for the summer break, but we had enough musicians to perform a decent set of Turkish, Greek, Armenian, and Ladino songs. I played ney and kaval. We were basically playing background music for a reception. We played for a while, then took a break for a buffet lunch, then played a few more songs. It was a relaxed, friendly, informal gig. I had a nice time.