Okay, so I'm doing "Phantom," right? Hell Week was great. Monday was good, Tuesday back at Grand Street, Wednesday was good and Thursday was GREAT! I was confident! I was on top of the world! I had my edge back!
So Friday comes and I'm ready to do the show and everything above 3rd space C isn't there. I mean, it's got no focus, no resonance and the higher I go, the more notes STOP SPEAKING altogether. Anything above an F -- gone. Not there. Nowhere to be found. Panic sets in.
I calmly approached Saturday's performance with optimism. I did a careful warm up. Low register: Check. Middle register: Check. Upper register: GONE. I was curling my bottom lip in just to squeak out whatever I could. Panic.
I tried 3 different mouthpieces, hoping one would make things work. Nothing.
So then I pulled the horn off my knee to take some of the pressure off my top lip and put more on my bottom. It worked for the most part. I was able to squeeze out about 85% of the show. The rest was just gone. Any attempt wound up with air going through the horn and no notes at all. There were times Heather looked at me to cue me, and I just gave her a panicked look right back. She's never going to hire me again -- I just know it.
After the show I apologized profusely, though Heather was barely aware of my problems (whew!). I went home, dejected, worried, panicked, and applied some hot compresses. It used to work long ago with some vitamin E (which I don't have). I'll do the compresses a few more times and hope and pray tomorrow is better.
This is not a good thing, especially with Lincoln Freakin' Center in a week.
Stay tuned.
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