The Really
Terrible Orchestra Of the Triangle (RTOOT)
Who
are our Fans -- The Audience
Our
fans come from all walks of life, all areas of the Research
Triangle (North Carolina, USA), including Chapel Hill, Durham, and
Raleigh, and beyond. The audience includes all levels of musical
sophistication, but certainly is filled with people who like to
have a fun night on the town.
We have a special
group of fans
known as the "Really Terrible Listeners" who will be seated in a
special reserved area up front at concerts so as to be exposed
closely to our really terrible music.
At the beginning of every concert, our audience is requested to
turn cell phones ON, to help cover up any terrible misteaks that
may be made during the performance.
Concerts are performed in Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill during
each season, underscoring our commitment to be a really terrible
cultural resource of the entire Triangle area. In addition, the
Really Terrible Orchestra Of the Triangle (RTOOT) is available for
weddings and corporate events at [great]
cost through our subsidiary commercial arm, the Really Terrible
Philharmonic (RTP).
The question has been asked, and is a reasonable one -- do we play
to the best of our ability, which is just limited and thus produces
the "really terrible" effect -- especially when playing music that
is too hard for us. Or do we play music that may be somewhat in our
realm and intentionally play it poorly. The real answer is probably
both, depending on the individual player, but in general we try to
play music that is challenging for us and therefore not entirely
perfect in performance. Our rule of thumb is that if the audience
can identify the tune, then we have succeeded. Whatever we play, we
like to have fun doing it and we hope the audience is entertained
by our music as well as by our antics
Our repertoire includes the standard classics of Handel, Mozart,
and Tchaikovsky, although Brahms and Shostakovitch are somewhat out
of our technical and artistic realm. We play simplified
arrangements of certain classics if it nevertheless produces a
reasonably terrible sound. For example, in our premier concert,
held on Wednesday, 10 December 2008 in the Auditorium of Hill Hall
at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Mr. Hobgood
directed the slow movement of the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 from
the keyboard, though the slow movement was played much more slowly
than normal. We opened the 2008 holiday concert with a Funeral
March (Tchaikovsky’s Marche Slav), and we performed our own Really
Terrible version of the beloved “Blue Danube” waltz by Johann
Strauss. Someone in the lobby remarked, “I never knew the Blue
Danube Waltz was so long”.
And of course our bread-and-butter in this latter day of musical
erudition is the pops genre.