Today is Sunday, right? Yesterday I drove down to Rehoboth Beach, DE, to play a concert with Dionne Warwick at the 18th Annual Rehoboth Beach Autumn Jazz Festival. I’d never been to Rehoboth Beach - it’s quite the cute little beach resort town. My neighbor in Cincinnati used to go to Rehoboth every summer with her then-husband.
So, yesterday I left at about 11am, suitcase packed (the promoter put us up in a hotel), cello in the backseat, mp3 player set to shuffle… The drive down was quite pleasant - no traffic to speak of and the weather was perfect. I love this time of year!
It took a little over 3 hours to get there, and I stopped at the Coach Factory Store before going to the hotel. The place was a madhouse!! They had a “support breast cancer research” coupon that was worth an additional 25% off. So, I bought a really cute black bag and went to the hotel. The Atlantis Inn is a typical resort motel (emphasis on the “m”). It was clean enough and it was walking distance to the convention center, which is where the concert was held.
As I was driving up to the hotel, my friend (and the contractor for the job) Kathy called to tell me that everyone was eating at a crab place across the street, so I checked in quickly and went across the street to meet the rest of the orchestra. For this gig, Dionne wanted just a string section, so Kathy (who is the founder of a group called Eboni Strings) hired 13 musicians from New York, Philadelphia and New Jersey. The kicker was that we were all Black! Woo hoo!! (She joked that this would probably be the last time that she was asked to contract musicians for a gig!) This was amazing because, as a Black string player, I’m usually the only Black person on the stage, or perhaps there are one or two others, at most. So, to have 14 of “us” show up was a real treat! I wonder what the sound folks and the other convention center crew thought when they saw us all stroll in. Doesn’t matter - Dionne said “all right!” when she came in for her portion of the rehearsal.
The rehearsal was supposed to start at 5pm but it didn’t - this “convention center” was a little hall with folding chairs… We ran through the show and then Dionne came in to run one number with us. After she left, the sound guys sent way too much time trying to figure out how to mic us (sigh) and then we had our sound check (are all the mics working?). After the sound check, we went back to the motel to change into our “blacks.” My roommate was a cellist from NYC named Nioka Workman, and she was sooo nice and fun to share a stand with!!! She had to go back to NYC right after the gig (with several other folks who had an early morning gig in the city) so we didn’t get to hang out as much as I’d hoped we would.
The concert was quite well attended and the audience was very enthusiastic. Dionne has aged (of course) but she can still pull off a show, despite her “chain-smoking” voice. The show lasted about an hour and some change, with no intermission. Her band was amazing (bass, two keyboards, drums, percussion, piano/conductor).
After the show, we all went back to Kathy’s room at the motel and had pizza and adult beverages and talked about the music business and life and generally had a great time.
I left Rehoboth at about 10:30am this morning and got home at about 1pm. I took a nap, did some work, tidied up a bit, and now it’s bedtime.
Ah. This is the life.
