School's Gala Dinner Rehearsals~

On 17th November 2012, there was another Gala Rehearsal in the hall. Chinese Orchestra members had to come earlier to set up the chairs and stands, tune the instruments and warm up first before the conductor comes. Me and my friends  are quite excited and anxious about this performance. But I thought playing the song 'Matsuri' as the opening performance was quite boring as we could not shout the "Hu'  and 'Ha' loud enough. 

We rehearse in the hall for 1 to 2 hours with the same song. It was tiring, boring and stuffy as our school hall's stage is too small for the whole Chinese Orchestra. And the worst part was that the conductor was absent so we did not perform very well. Every single practice, we rehearse on our 'Hu' and our 'Ha' as it was not loud enough. We said that the AVA crew should just install Mics but Ms Chew said that there was already not enough space. I wonder what we will be wearing for our Gala Dinner Performance. 

After that, we bought back our instruments into the music room and kept the instruments into our store room. We then gathered for the teacher to say a few words and comment on our performance at the hall just now. She said that it was not good and we could have done much much much much better. We were then released and I went to eat lunch with my friends.

On 19th November 2012, Monday, there was another Gala rehearsal. We had to report earlier as usual to set up the chairs and stands, tune the instruments and get ready before the conductor comes. Today, Mr Chua, our Chinese Orchestra conductor, came for practice. He told us that he will not be conducting us on the actual day of the Gala Dinner as he has to conduct another Orchestra at another occasion for the Guest of Honour, the President. He said that another instructor would be conducting and it was the Woodwind instructor. Most of us did not know him as we were of different sections. We were all looking forward to meeting him. 

Then around 11 to 12am, he came into the music room and Mr Chua told him the details. We did 2 demonstrations by playing the entire song. Then he tried to conduct. At first, it was quite messy and frustrating. Then, we went for a 45 minutes lunch break. By the time we came back, it was time to rehearse in the hall. We had to bring all our instruments to the hall. It was tough as very few people came to help the percussion, the drums group. They only took care of their own individual sections. I felt a bit disappointed. 

We started to rehearse in the hall with the woodwind instructor. It was better and he managed to conduct better than in the morning. After the 1 and a half hours of rehearsing in the hall, we put our instruments into the 3E2 classroom. We moved the tables outside and arranged the chairs. After that, I went to help the yang qin and percussion group to move their instruments to the classroom. I was very tired and sweaty. After that, the teacher locked up the room and we went to the music room to gather. Ms Tan said we did a litttle better than before but we still could improve further. Then we were released.