Year Abroad: The day I played my first concert with la banda de Baeza…well, almost…

The band have been very welcoming.  There are a few of my students in the band including the girl whose sister is the fiancée of my landlord’s son…la hermana de la novia del hijo de mi casero.  Her name is Paula and she is in my 2 eso class for Art.  I call her and her friend Teresa (another of my students and the niece of the conductor) my sisters in the band as they are always really friendly and making sure that I am alright and can understand everything in Spanish.  I got lost the first night I tried to find the building by myself and ended up asking a man with an instrument case if he was going there.  I got to talking to him and we were joking about why I was in Spain…I told him that I was only here for the band.  The band is one of the best places for me to improve my Spanish as there are only a few bilinguals and I have made my kids promise that outside of school, unless I’m really stuck or they want to check something, that we must speak in Spanish and they have been following this.

I’ve had a few problems with trying to get the slighter older teenagers/early twenties (which I’m now included in…yuck!) to talk to me.  I think they are scared that I won’t be able to understand them and that since a lot of them aren’t bilingual students they don’t want to take that risk.  What they don’t seem to understand, and what I am trying to change so that they do, is that I am bilingual…well almost.  I can understand the majority of things that people say to me and I can have conversations about things, but I seem to have convinced some of them and they are slowly starting to talk a little to me.

I am the only girl that plays the trumpet in this band.  It seems strange to me as in the regional bands of North Lanarkshire and in the GU Big Band we are nearly all girls.  I got some strange looks as I sat down but this only prompted me to prove myself and as the music is of a level where I can play it just by sight-reading I was promoted to 2^nd.  I think soon, maybe after Christmas, I might be on the first part.  All the music that we play, well almost all (we were playing L'Arlésienne by Bizet), is from Spain or by Spanish composers and it is given me the opportunity to learn how to play polkas, pasadobles and to understand the different idea the Spanish have when it comes to harmonies and rhythms.  All very interesting for me, also it doesn’t hurt that this type of music favours a trumpet. 

 

So far my favourite pieces that the band play are Los Orillios del Dumboa (cracking trumpet solo), Manolo Lazaro, La Cancion de Murcia (especially when the guy who sings it is injecting all of the passion needed) and La Tabernera en el Puerto (not 100% on all the names…).   

 

For the concerts the band has a uniform.  Of course coming from Scotland on my year abroad I didn’t really provision for this.  I brought my concert dress but for Big Band stuff it is all black tie and I don’t go to school anymore so I don’t have a tie.  I will bring one back at Christmas.  So they had to give me one of the chaquetas de musica and I have a blue skirt.  This along with a white t-shirt, in place of a shirt, and a tie.  I didn’t actually have any plain white t-shirts…so I had to turn one backwards and wear it…always one step ahead of the game, eh?  I cannot express how much I love this jacket.  It symbolises how much I have achieved already this year and all the stuff I still have to do. 

 

 

Back to tonight.  I was really excited and eager to get on that stage and play through my first concert with la banda de Baeza.  As I was walking down to the centre, at around 8pm, to where the Teatro is, the lights all went out.  In an ancient town like this it is really strange as you see everyone take out their mobile phones and bump the flash lights on.  I got to the theatre and got ready without the lights and just the surprisingly good light on my phone.  Actually this is the same light that when I was stuck in Hunter Halls West in the dark, got me out.  So got sorted in the dark.  Trumpet ready, mute ready, specks ready, valve oil check and headed up to the stage area.  We were supposed to start at half past 8.  By 9 pm we were all getting worried that we weren’t going to get to play at all.  Then the lights came on…we all got sorted, everyone in their places, music out…and bam!  They went out again!  Another 5 minutes and they are back on.  We begin, finally.  Our first piece was a pasadoble written by the conductor for his mother (Manolo Lazaro).  We get about 47 bars into the piece and off go the lights.  We sit in the darkness for a few minutes before Martin says that we are to play two of the pieces that the band know off by heart…except I don’t know them at all.  So I just sit there following the fingers of the guys sitting next to me and do a good job of miming the music. 

 

After the third time during the concert that the lights went out, we had to cancel the show.  I was pretty gutted that we couldn’t play.  This concert meant a lot to me, but there will be other times and other concerts.  And I actually had a lot of fun tonight laughing at the silly eejits with their flashing lights and at the little girl who was jumping over chairs in the dark and saying that she was going to enter “si tu que vales” a show a little like Britain’s Got Talent…but with actual talented people.  Someone said that the power cut was sabotage from the Symphonic Band and others said that it was the ghost of Antonio Machado…I’m inclined to believe the latter, although if it happens again it might be because I am a foreigner and bringing them misfortune. 

 

Tomorrow I have a lunch thing with the band.  It sounds like it is going to be great.  We all have to dress elegantly and I’m guessing there will be a ton of really good food.  It will also be another time for me to try and break into the fabric of the band and to make some friends.