Tuesday, June 5, 2007

concert recap

The Concert on Sunday afternoon went extremely well. There was a nice crowd of people and all the choirs gave excellent performances. The Haydn Te Deum with orchestra was particularly exhilarating. I was extremely stressed out during it, however, as I was attempting to capture the goings on with video, 2 sets of digital recording equipment, and my trusty Digital SLR. Alas, it was too much to juggle and it ended up that I screwed up on the recordings. So while I got an excellent recording of most of the gallery choir performances, I didn't get much of the Ritual Choir or the Te Deum. It was my bad, I simply was trying to do too many things at once and messed it up. It didn't help that I was using unfamiliar equipment (a rented DAT).

Speaking of DATs, I am really coming to despise the TASCAM DA-P1. It's not intuitive at all. I wish Long and McQuade rented out the newer TASCAM HD-P2. The main difference between the two is that one records on DAT (Digital Audio Tapes) and the other on Compact Flash cards (the same as my digital camera). The price of the newer units is quite reasonable ($1000) and if I had extra money lying around it's the kind of tool I'd love to have lying around. Sigh.

Anyway, over the next few days I'm hoping to process some of the "take" from the concert to post on the web. Cross your fingers that I got some good stuff!

After the concert I met up with some of Betsy's friends and the four of headed over to the ROM to see the new "Crystal." It was a complex experience. There were some things we really liked and some things we absolutely did not. In the end we all felt that building was surprisingly difficult to abide. Something about all those weird angles makes one anxious.

-t