Tonight I attempted for the first time in the project to do a recording from memory, with mixed success.
I turned the lights off, so that I wouldn’t have visual distractions, and it did help me focus and be in a kaddishy mood. Unfortunately, it also led to some awkward bits, including some unnecessary chipped notes, a brief tangent of improvisation while I tried to remember what came next. A few extra new lines took the place of a line or two that never quite happened.
I made a complete mess in the stopped horn section. When you play stopped horn, you have to finger everything down a half step. Unfortunately, my memory of the passage is visual, but blurry, and I couldn’t quite see whether the notes I was imagining were the actual sounding pitches or the transpositions that I finger, and the result was a mess.
I took a freer, easier approach to the ending that I liked, though, and Zoe, the a niente is back for the final note.