Sometimes I get called for a gig at the last minute with no time to prepare. But when I have a few weeks’ notice, there’s a real process I follow to get ready. Here’s how I approached subbing with the San Francisco Symphony — from the moment I found out what we were playing to the final Sunday matinee.
Finding Out What We’re Playing
The first thing I do is figure out the program. For this particular week, we had three pieces: a contemporary work called The Space Between Stars, the Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto, and selections from Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
My first stop is always the IMSLP Petrucci Music Library to see what’s in the public domain. The Saint-Saëns was easy to find there. Wagner is certainly old enough to be in the public domain, but I wasn’t about to practice all four operas — I’d wait to see exactly what was being excerpted. And a brand-new symphony premiere? Definitely not on IMSLP!
In the meantime, I looked everything up on YouTube. I found a performance of The Space Between Stars from the Sydney Conservatory, and the Saint-Saëns I could access directly through IMSLP. Listening early — even just to get the shape of a piece in your head — is always time well spent.
Getting the Music Early
I almost always download whatever I can ahead of time, even for music I know well. For the Saint-Saëns, I was able to do a quiet run-through at home with a practice mute on, just getting the shapes under my fingers. Not worrying about tempo, not worrying about bowings — those would come with the printed parts. Just letting the contours of the phrases settle into my nervous system.
For the Wagner and the new piece, I had to wait until the physical parts were available at the symphony’s music library. When I went to pick them up, I was glad I hadn’t tried to pick them up earlier — the library staff had been off the previous week!
Going Through the Parts
Once I had the printed parts in hand, the real preparation began. There’s something irreplaceable about playing off actual paper in an orchestral setting. You can see where you are in the score at a glance, and you don’t have to negotiate with your stand partner about screen angles. For chamber music and solo work, I use my iPad, but for orchestra, paper just feels right.
Going through the Wagner, I was immediately glad I hadn’t tried to hunt through all of The Ring on my own — the parts were very specific excerpts with detailed markings. I scanned for moments of activity, noted spots that would need page turns, and flagged anything with tricky accidentals or string crossings. For the Valkyries, I’ve done that many, many times, so it was mostly about reminding my hands where things live on the bass. For Götterdämmerung, I actually downloaded the score from IMSLP just to orient myself and make sure I understood how the excerpts fit into the larger picture.
A note for anyone unfamiliar: the opening of that opera involves holding an extremely low note for over 130 bars, which has inspired more than a few bass players — myself included — to invest in an extension with individual closers
The Saint-Saëns part came with bowings already marked, which clarified a few things that had been ambiguous in the PDF. I also noticed important logistical details — like a spot where we’d need to put on mutes and wait for the strings before turning a page. That kind of thing is easy to miss if you’re not looking carefully ahead of time.
The Space Between Stars turned out to have relatively little for the basses, including a prominent solo marked with parentheses (meaning: don’t play it).
The Week of Preparation
My approach during the prep week is to keep abstract technical work going while shifting the balance heavily toward the repertoire at hand.
In the early days, I focused on painting the shapes of phrases — no metronome, no recordings, just getting the geography of the music under my fingers in a calm, relaxed way.
For passages that are more rhythmically free, like a lot of Wagner, I’ll put on a recording and play along, because the rhythms can be non-intuitive on the page. For passages that are more in tempo, I’ll work with a metronome and gradually bring things up to speed.
I deliberately don’t make hard decisions about fingerings at this stage. What feels right in my living room might not work the same way on stage with seven other bass players. I stay flexible and wait to see what the ensemble settles on in rehearsal.
I also took the weekend off. We were in Sonoma County wine country, and that break — no practicing Saturday or Sunday — was actually a good thing. Once the symphony week starts, it’s intense. Having a mental reset before you walk in is valuable.
Taking Care of the Body and Mind
This is something I’ve learned over the years: the preparation isn’t only musical. Symphony weeks have a way of bringing on weird back pains — purely psychological, I know, but real nonetheless. So I keep up my exercise routine, prioritize sleep, eat well, and make sure I’m not building up extra stress.
On the day of the first rehearsal, I had a good breakfast — eggs, bacon, a breakfast sandwich that hit a solid carb-protein-fat ratio — and my usual coffee. I also take Alpha Brain, a nootropic I’ve found genuinely useful on rehearsal mornings. My mistake rate in rehearsals seemed to drop noticeably once I started using it. Not sponsored, just something that works for me.
The Rehearsal Week
The standard professional schedule goes something like this: an initial rehearsal, a double-rehearsal day (two sessions, usually one for the main program and one for the concerto), a dress rehearsal, and then the concert — or, in this case, three concerts over the weekend.
The first rehearsal is always the one where everyone is feeling things out — getting to know the conductor, finding the pizzicatos, figuring out how the ensemble breathes together. By the double rehearsal day, you’re digging in. By the dress, you want to have the hard work done.
This particular week had some added tension around the Wagner cuts. The Ring excerpts involve complicated measure numbering — in some places the winds are in a different time signature than the strings — and the cuts were still being adjusted between the double rehearsal and dress rehearsal day. There were minutes of real pins-and-needles energy in the hall as everyone worked to get on the same page. That’s just part of professional orchestra life.
What made it all feel right was the conductor, Simone Young, who has conducted at Bayreuth — Wagner’s own concert hall. Just before we ran the Ring in dress rehearsal, rather than drilling another technical passage, she told us what the pit at Bayreuth is like. Only one or two musicians in the room had been there. But it was exactly the right thing to say. You could feel the room shift.
We were going to begin the Rheingold in almost total darkness, with the lights slowly coming up. That was going to be something!
Between the Dress Rehearsal and the Concert
All the rehearsals are done. Now it’s about showing up in the best possible condition to make music.
Immediately after the dress rehearsal, I go get a substantial, healthy lunch — there’s a salad chain called Mixed that does a great bulgur bowl with chicken and kale. I eat well, let it digest, then stretch or walk. I used to try to squeeze in video editing or emails during this window. I’ve learned that it robs the concert of my best. My job in those hours is just to be ready.
The vibe shifts in performance. All that focused information-gathering of rehearsals — watching the principal bass, watching the conductor, listening to the ensemble, tracking your own part — settles into something more instinctive. You stop rehearsing and start playing.
The Concerts
Three concerts: Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday matinee.
Friday was the most tiring — dress rehearsal in the morning, followed by a full evening concert. Saturday was great but required a lot of following, as the cellist was taking generous rubato throughout the concerto. By Sunday, the cello concerto felt locked in. We all went out for a hang with the bass section after. Just a pleasure.
And then, lying in bed Monday morning recovering, my phone rang. The personnel manager. Could I come in within the hour?
Couldn’t make it work that day. But that’s the other kind of gig — the one where you show up with no preparation at all. That’s a whole different story!
The preparation process I’ve described here represents weeks of work: listening, learning, physical practice, smart eating, rest, and staying calm. But in another sense, you’ve been preparing your whole life. Every rehearsal, every concert, every youth orchestra performance — the Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto I played this week, I first performed in a youth orchestra back in 1991. All of that is in there somewhere when you walk on stage. The week of preparation is just about making sure it can come out.
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