Last Sunday was my big day. It was my first function performance day! Me and my music teacher Mr. Chan, Chun Yeen and Ray Aun were hired to perform as a cello quartet at a wedding dinner. It was a really busy day for me. I had orchestra rehearsal from 2pm-5pm that day, playing double bass for junior section and cello for senior section. Then after that, me and Chun Yeen followed Mr. Chan's ride back to his house. I bathed, put on my performance outfit, managed to watch a part of a documentary about the Hogzilla (a garbage demolisher), and when Ray Aun came the 4 of us took off to Noble Banquet, a prestigious restaurant in Bukit Bintang, which is also our performance venue.
We arrived at 6.30pm and quickly set up our instruments, music stands and mic. We just practised a little, and we laid down our cellos to wait until it was time we perform. During the wait we had free Sprites, but after finishing that we managed to hook in another glass of free Carlsberg each. We chatted a little and took a photo, which Mr. Chan uploaded to Facebook on the spot.
The Mighty Four! From the left : Mr. Chan, Ray Aun, Salty and Chun Yeen. Ray Aun looks abit homosexual but never mind.
We took our places on the stage by 8pm, but the real performanced started at 8.30pm. The bride and the groom stepped into the hall, and we started our main piece : the Kanon in D. We played the music while the 2 of them walked right up to their table and took their seats, that's when our music faded away, with perfect synchronization between the 4 of us. Then there was a presentation of the 1st dish, and then we started playing all the pieces Mr. Chan personally arranged that lasted almost an hour. We played pretty well with very minimal errors, although one of my strings suddenly snapped and went out of tune in the middle of a piece. But I covered it fine enough.
We finished our part at 9.30pm, where we began to pack up and they began to play Jazz music from their music player. We were all exhausted and very hungry. We were paid RM 1000 on the spot, and in cash. We brought our cellos back to Mr. Chan's car, sat in and started dividing the money. 4 of us got RM 200 each, and the remainder RM 200 was used to cover the transportation fee and to buy us an awesome dinner that night.
Maybe some of you already had working experience and had already earned quite an amount of salary, but for me this is my very first time I've really worked and put in effort to earn money. To all the audience maybe it was just a simple 1-hour performance, a show of music, a flow of melody. But they did not know how much time and effort we spent just to prepare for this performance. Hours and hours of practise, countless amount of effort to make sure our melody can get synchronized between 4 different cellos, and 4 even more different players. The money I received from this performance is of higher value than any other, because it is obtained through effort and hard work. It is the fruit of my own labour.
Just a simple advice, money is not easily earned at all. So treasure all that cash you have in your wallet now. =) And I heard from Mr. Chan, our audience thought our performance was actually a CD recording. I take that as a compliment.
Okay that's it for the update. Got another performance at 6th of February, wish me luck! xD
Salty
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