More technical difficulties

Starting week 4 in my countdown!! This week is the beginning of the spring break season, which if you work in a resort like a cruise ship lasts for a good month and a half, instead of a decent week as it should be. This week we have 300 kids, doubled from last week, and around 200 college age kids. Next week that number will be more like 1000 kids and 500 college aged kids. So here we go!!

Last week we had a brand new sound engineer, again. The company must really be hurting for good sound engineers. This one is a very nice girl from England, but has been making so many obvious mistakes over and over again that we are all a bit frustrated, especially when it means even more extra rehearsal time as it will again this week. Things like forgetting to turn on the track, forgetting to play recording, forgetting to turn the singers' mics on again and again in time for their entrances, and forgetting to turn them off when they've left the stage again. Maybe I have been spoiled with sound techs in the past, but it seems like these are pretty easy things to correct, and it just gets me when the same mistakes are made at a tech run, then again in the first show, and a third time in the second show. Everyone makes mistakes, but professionalism means you don't make the same ones three times in a row. Anyway, enough of my rant - I'm really just bitter about the extra rehearsals her lack of experience is causing the band. For example, tomorrow we have a full tech run of the production show, followed by another half hour of sound work just with the orchestra and singers, followed by an hour Captain's Welcome Big Band set, followed by the two shows. It will be a really long night for us, playing-wise, and I know the shows will probably suffer due to tired chops. Oh well. Such is life, and new sound techs.

As for our new/old sax player who was supposed to return today - whoops! Too much snow in Poland for him to leave Gdansk, so not only will I need to continue doing the Assistant Musical Director job another week (I really don't mind), but we'll also have no alto sax player this week. Which means I get moved up to the fron row on the bandstand! Woohoo! Just kidding....I like hanging out with the trumpets in the back, I feel more like I'm part of a brass section. So anyway should make for an interesting week in the Voyager of the Seas 9 pie- uhhh...8 piece Orchestra.