Fiddle Me This

I play in my local symphony orchestra.  I have been playing violin since I was 10 years old, which means I have played violin for 25 years!! Whoa.

Let me take a step back and tell you that I am a part time professional musician.  I have my steady 8-5 job, but I also play my violin at weddings, funerals, nursing homes, etc and it's more of a fun thing for me.  And the bonus is I get paid a little bit of money to do something I love.  It's not a lot, but enough to go get my hair done or a pedi or a date night with hubby every once in a while.

Last night we had rehearsal for our concert on Saturday.  I was put with a new stand partner and I don't like it.  Not one bit.  My usual stand partner and I are really good friends, but she got moved to the first violin section.  (which is harder than the second violin section, which I reside)  Because I play in the second section, I don't practice because I am good enough to pick up the music and just play it.  I am not a rock star, though, so don't consider me the next Regina Stranasacchi. (I didn't know who that was, I just googled famous women violinists).

Anyway, my new stand partner is about a 20 year old boy who still has pretty bad acne and accentuates this acne with a brow piercing.  His hair is kinda greasy and I am sure (because I am stereotyping like non other right now) that he still lives with mom and plays lots and lots of video games.  He is skinny and tries to have a grunge-type look to him.  He is clearly an artist.  And he hogs the stand.

Music stand etiquette says that you should have the stand directly in the middle of both players.  The person sitting on the left of the stand is the one who turns pages, gets the music in order and counts during all the rests so that they can tell the person on the right when to come in.  :)

Upon my arrival to rehearsal, grunge boy has the stand dead-center in front of himself and when I ask him to move it closer to me, he sighs in annoyance.  I am not sure I made the right choice in moving in closer to me because then he was practically on my lap and kept bumping me with his bow hand.  At one point I looked directly at his eye brow piercing and thought to myself that he should pick another color other than white ring/stud.  It looked like a zit that could blow any second and spray all over the music.

We are flying through the music at rehearsal, which is fine with me as the twins and hubby are home waiting for me, when we come across a piece of music called "Strings on Fire". (I'll try to provide a link later) To say the least, it's fast.  I was able to play it pretty well and I am sure that if I did practice this piece, I would crush it Fat Amy style.  So we played it a couple of times and pretty soon grunge boy says that he's got tendinitis and this is hurting his hand.  Translation = it's too fast for him to play.  I told him that he should switch hands every once in a while (gesturing with my hand what boys do in the absence of a girl).  I'm just playing.  I didn't say that, but I was thinking it!

When I got home, I told Ryan that the second violin section totally went down the crapper.  He said, "aren't you in the second violin section?"

Yes.