The Double Rainbow Quintet is Back in Action!

After many fun (and hot) evenings rehearsing up in the Penthouse, we presented two concerts this August - one at a local church, and the other in a living room.  Salon style concerts really are wonderful, and completely underutilized, in my humble opinion.  Being up close and personal to see and feel the music is a unique experience.

And while it's great for the audience, it's even better because we all get along really well, laugh at the same jokes (or laugh when nobody else gets our jokes), and genuinely nerd out about music.  We're a good fit. 

The only hard time we've had has been coming up with a name that sticks!  We haven't had a problem coming up with names, but dreaming up with one that we'd actually use has been notably difficult.  Hospital Bound Quintet, Paradoxical Inequality Quintet (aka PIQ), The Double Rainbow Quintet and about 18 others have been thrown around, but we haven't really landed on the perfect one quite yet.

Our first piece was Maslanka's third woodwind quintet - as our bassoonist described it, "comically difficult."

Our second piece was Three Sea Shanties, by Malcom Arnold.  I was in charge of talking a bit about his background, and he was quite the interesting fellow: he both composed the Oscar-winning score to The Bridge Over the River Kwai, but also an orchestra piece featuring vacuum cleaners and a floor polisher. 

Our final piece was a suite of Brazilian dances by Medaglia that was deceptively tricky to put together. 

Next up?  The oboist is arranging Darius Milhaud's Saudades de Brasil for quintet (in his free time).  I told you we were all nerds.