Apparently I am going in reverse now, from most recent to less recent... 

So I can see that I also neglected to write about the lengthy process of preparing parts for Celebration of the Deep - yikes!  Proof-reading the notes and markings, and then trying to put little musical cues into the parts, so that each instrument might have some idea at the end of a long rest, just where their entrance was supposed to fit into what else is going on... 

Maybe I get too wound up about this part because of coming from two backgrounds:  1) as a singer, it is typical to see all the other parts (in choral music) plus piano accompaniment, and as a violinist, in orchestra we play often ALL the time, so there are NO rests!  No doubt the other instruments get used to counting.  I know I watched a percussionist doing a two-handed counting scheme that made me think of an abacus when he had a VERY LONG break before his next entrance.  Good idea.

As a performer in my string group Water Bear I noticed that in the repetitions of the basic form we usually played (AABB most often), I could reliably get lost in the music/playing of the moment and not know how many times we had played the form; this is a problem if we had agreed, for example, to do something special for the third time around.  We gave each other the "hairy eyeball" when this lapse in memory would occur, or when we had THOUGHT it had occurred. Yes, I was not the only player in Water Bear that this happened to. Without a video/audio of the piece to consult later, it would prove impossible to determine just what had, in fact, happened.  The way we played was so improvisatory anyhow, and the musicianship level high enough that I don't think anyone noticed.  Did you, ever?