<\/p>\n
I turned<\/strong> <\/span>down a gig. I rarely do that. Try new things, blah, blah. I was asked to play clarinet for the play \u201cDi Yiddishe Vayb\u201d (The Jewish Wife) at the BorderLight International Theatre + Fringe Festival, Cleveland.<\/p>\n The money stunk: $180 for six services (meaning two rehearsals and four shows). Plus, I wasn\u2019t too keen on the play’s description — something about “anti-fascism,” Brecht and Chelm. But Bertolt (me) said yes, initially.<\/p>\n Then, a couple weeks later, the start times of the gig(s)\u00a0 and the venue changed. We went from the Hermit Club — a cool place — to a hill on Public Square (not so unique). I emailed the play people, “Somebody changed the ground rules on me!\u201d I couldn\u2019t make the new times, which was true.<\/p>\n An actor<\/strong><\/span> emailed me, \u201cYeah, the scheduling for a fringe show is kind of wacky; thanks for bearing with us while you could. We’ll look into other options, and please do let us know if anything changes on your end!\u201d<\/p>\n Then, the other day, I got a generic sort of email, requesting a klez-oriented clarinet player for the play, for $450. The price of poker had gone up! I texted the playwright and said I\u2019d do the gigs for $450; I would rearrange my schedule, which wouldn’t be easy. But the play people had already found somebody else.<\/p>\n The first show is tomorrow. If you attend, please let me know how the hill it is, and who\u2019s on clarinet?<\/p>\n I should have done it. Or maybe not. Some FOMO here.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Edit \/ update:<\/em><\/p>\n I went<\/strong><\/span> to the play last night and it stunk. Yippee! I would have died if I had had to sit through that show six times. The actor was great, but the script was not-too-funny Chelm stories spiced with references to Nazis. Experimental, and a failure. The clarinet player had a boring part, and she didn\u2019t play loud enough. You\u2019ve got to blast when you\u2019re outdoors. When I was in New Orleans a few years ago, I sat in with local jazz heroes on the main square there; afterward, the bandleader said to me, \u201cPlay with some balls!\u201d So I went home to Cleveland and got a louder clarinet barrel. I\u2019m glad I went to “Di Yiddishe Vayb” last night. No mo’ FOMO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I turned down a gig. I rarely do that. Try new things, blah, blah. I was asked to play clarinet for the play \u201cDi Yiddishe Vayb\u201d (The Jewish Wife) at the BorderLight International Theatre + Fringe Festival, Cleveland. The money stunk: $180 for six services (meaning two rehearsals and four shows). Plus, I wasn\u2019t too […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-klezmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29890"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29908,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29890\/revisions\/29908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}