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Old 14-January-2009, 04:43 PM
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JayUtah JayUtah is offline
Order of Kilopi
 
Join Date: Oct 2001
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Originally Posted by NEOWatcher View Post
Your experiences never cease to amaze me.
One of the perks of never having lived more than 20 miles from one major military installation or another. The "1812" for this performance was a five-minute excerpt. The full version is about 20 minutes long (too long for the intended audience) and quite difficult to conduct. Although Tchaikovsky scored an explicit "cannon" part with a designated rhythm, meant to be played on a large drum, our artillery detail were not musicians. Hence at a certain point in the music we cued the liaison who simply had the soldiers fire at will. You know it's a good performance when you can feel your pant legs wiggle in response to the concussion.

Quote:
That's got to be an eye catcher.
You'd think so. But I always have to explain it.
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