Thanks for a great rehearsal on Monday night. We have a lot of work to do on the Promises, Promises medley, but it promises (pun intended) to be a great performance on July 2. Great work, Barton! It is so much fun to revisit 1812 now as an “old friend,” instead of a lurching behemoth. And I think the Sinatra numbers will work very, very well. Thank you, Frank Mastrone, for standing in for Ryan Silverman!

We’re back at it on Monday evening at TMH with the first of the final two working rehearsals. I’ll update the rehearsal plan by Saturday, but count on final detailed work on the four main compositions (Tull, Cuong, Mackey, Smith) and our soloists will be coming on Monday as well.

We’ve now raised $2845.00 of our $10K GoFundMe project goal. Have you shared the link with your contacts yet? It costs nothing to do so, and you never know who will be motivated by your invitation. Please send this out to your friends and family via email or Facebook today!

This caught my eye today, for two reasons: Viet Cuong and Marin Alsop. Viet’s music will be performed at this festival in August, and Marin Alsop, Music Director of the Cabrillo Festival, is a Masters alum. Viet plans to attend the concert at the Palace in June. If I can get Roger Zare and John Mackey there as well, it will be a “sweep!” By the way, I heard back from Viet this week. He approves of the A section tempo to be slightly relaxed for clarity, and approved of Jeff’s idea to extend m.311 to five beats. Regarding my idea that the long descending lines at m.191-196, 290-295, and 301-307 were inspired by the “Poachers” movement of Lincolnshire Posy, he said: “I went back and listened to that movement, and it does remind me of the bass line! It totally wasn’t intentional, but there was probably some subconscious stuff at work…I played clarinet in the piece years ago in high school All-State.” (Remember, he taught himself how to play clarinet in 9th grade so he could march in the Macy’s and Rose Bowl parades — and subsequently made All-State on clarinet. If this isn’t inspiring, I’m not sure what is.) He also approved my idea to stretch the penultimate bar slightly to reinforce the ending.

Please remember to bring a check for Marge for the June 18 Circle Line and lunch if you have not already done so. And I hope to see many of you at Ed’s memorial on Saturday.

Enjoy the weekend — see you Monday!