Most of us thought this was going to be dress rehearsal, but there turned out to be an actual audience, so we had to get it together. I wasn't aware of the overall plan, so I generally waited until someone told me to do something. I didn't want to leave the gear alone, so during the sections where everyone was upstairs, I stuck downstairs, though I did venture up to see parts of the party scene. It's a good play, setting Macbeth in the Pittsburgh renovation milieu, with Pittsburghese dialogue.

Once again I'd be playing with the excellent drummer Mike Yaklich, Steve, his son, and--another bonus!--bassist Steve Kemmerer, whom I'd not played with since the Clutter days. His wife Erica was on viola as well, for a really nice sounding ensemble.

I did a bit of my ambient walk on music, and after that there wasn't a whole lot to do. I hadn't had time to get dinner, but Steve mentioned that there'd be a party scene, during which I could eat. I kept smelling pizza, and finally realized it was back in the band space. Everyone was upstairs doing this long scene for a while, and I figured that must have been the scene Steve was talking about, so I had a few slices. Then one of the actresses came down and brought the pizza upstairs--so that was the party. Oops. It didn't cause a problem, though.

Much of the activity was upstairs for quite a while, so a number of the rest of us were milling around downstairs. Turned out that sound in the band space (ultimately this will be the kitchen) carried right upstairs and was clearly audible, so we had to stay quiet. Fortunately we didn't find this out on the opening opening night.

Finally the audience came back downstairs for the end of the play, and we were cued for the song "Last House on the Left" (which, quite literally, was the house we were in), and tore into it, though there were timing problems among the ensemble which I'm sure we'll get worked out. I faded the ambience in and out, sometimes blending with the viola in an interesting way, or at least interesting to me, since I couldn't tell which of us was playing every so often.

Steve whispered to us that we were going to do a blues in E-flat. So the next piece came up, and Steve cued bassist Steve and violist Erica, who were playing an understated, mournful piece. I'd assumed we were on this E-flat piece, so I started doing a legato line of E-flat to D, and it worked well...though Steve pointed out that this wasn't the piece he had in mind. Oops. But he also said that it worked, so we'd keep it in. Then we laid out until the end of the play, when our E-flat curtain call piece came up, and we were done. People dug it. In all, a successful dress rehearsal/soft opening, with some stuff to work on, but the feeling was good for tomorrow night.