Of course they’d be doing Shostakovich.


This was my first rehearsal with A Far Cry, and I hung back, on purpose.  Just sat and listened through the first run through.  When they started working I got up and started shooting, but I stayed behind the orchestra.  I will need to get in front of them at some point, which is going to be a challenge in that room.  But trust is not automatic, it’s earned, and it takes time.  I have the great luxury, finally,  of time. I’ll wait.

Also being behind them put me somehow in them, which is what I’m trying to get at.  I shot through the players arms, read the scores over the necks of their instruments.  This is not the vantage point of the seats in the hall.  

I spent most of the time on the long end of my favorite zoom, the 24 to 105.  After a while I switched to the telephoto.  It seemed like the further into those instruments I could get, the closer I got to something, and not just literally.

Of course Shostakovich because I have a long history of Russian nerdism.  My high school term papers were on Dostoyevsky.  My college application essays detailed my life goals of becoming the CBS foreign correspondent to Moscow.  My 19 year old cat is named Masha after a character in a Chekov play.

I’ve been watching this orchestra for a while, waiting for right opportunity.  Of course the concert we finally connect on, would end with Shostakovich.  

Of course.