David Lang

and everybody has their own instruction.

And they sit at home before the first rehearsal and they practice their own instruction.

So they have an idea of what they're responsible for, but they have no idea if they're gonna be able to make something good with someone else when they get together.

And so the process of rehearsal isn't about them learning the notes.

The process of rehearsal is them learning how to be a community

that comes together to build this thing.

I think it's a little bit of everything.

You know, I'd never heard the piece before either.

If I had rehearsed with them for a month, I might actually be able to say, oh, this one note, can you bring it out a little more?

I might have more specific comments.

But I'm only able at that moment to take in the overall shape.

But I also think they are really great, and they are musical, and their job is to take those notes that look like nothing on a piece of paper, and they know how to breathe a certain kind of life into it.

So even if they are not breathing the kind of life into it that I imagined, it already starts at a very enlivened space.

And so I just got super happy from the whole thing.

Yeah.

There was one moment on one day of rehearsal, though, where Gustavo was asking for detailed notes about every movement.

And this sent me into a little bit of a terror because I realized he was going to go, movement one, what are your comments?

Then movement two, what are your comments?

And then I realized I better have comments for movement three and movement six and whatever.

So as he's fixing the things that I just pointed out, I quickly rammed my score and thumb through and I went, okay, I got to say something for movement five, right?