Friday, July 18, 2008

Looking For Fellow Carroll Gardens Musicians To Form Pretty Awful Orchestra

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photo credit: cyj1121


I had to smile when I saw the email below on the Carroll Gardens list server. " Seagardens" is looking for fellow musicians to form an orchestra and who won't mind if the resulting music won't sound too good. So far, she has recruited two penny-whistle players, a guitar player and a trumpet player. She herself plays the bagpipes. That's a pretty good start, I'd say.

Below is her email.



A few months ago, a man from Scotland wrote an article in the Times
that started off "Why should real musicians - the ones who can
actually play their instruments have all the fun?"

He and a group of friends founded the "Really Terrible Orchestra, an
inclusive orchestra for whose who really want to play, but who
cannot do so very well. Or cannot do so at all, in some cases."

I keep thinking about this idea, and that in another life I'd come
back as a musician. But why wait for another life, after all my son
is off to college on Labor Day weekend, so another life is
presenting itself anyway!

On my block, there are two self-taught penny whistle
players, one guitar player who learned decades ago and hasn't played
since and wants to learn the flute anyway, and one trumpet player
who's probably the best amongst us. I played in a bag pipe band in
London when I was growing up!

If this idea appeals to you and you wouldn't think it mattered if,
on occasion, as happened to the Scottish guy, members unknowingly
played different pieces of music, by different composers, at the
same time, get in touch and let's see where this leads us.

Yours in music,
Seagardens





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1 comment:

The Really Terrible Orchestra Of the Triangle said...

Congratulations on forming the Carroll Gardens Pretty Awful Orchestra. We hope to meet some of you at the RTO April Fools Day Concert in New York. We would also invite you to join the intergalactic League of Really Terrible Orchestras, (the iLTO) which includes the orginal RTO in Edinburgh as well as the RTSO String Orchestra in San Francisco, the RTO-PA out of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and the RTO Westchester Symphony. And us. You may be amused by our website at www.rtoot.org

Anything we can do to share the agonizing experience of organizing one of these things, we will be happy to help.

-- W. Sands Hobgood, Conductor
The Really Terrible Orchestra Of the Triangle (RTOOT)