The Fog of Recitals

This may be a bit condensed, as I have a meeting in 1/2 an hour:

The International Society, a group that hosts social activities and language courses for international students, celebrated their 40th anniversary last night. It's rather important, as they are (according to their brochure), the 1st organization of their kind. As they are a couple blocks from RNCM, we were asked to provide a concert in their honour.

I was asked to contribute 15 min. of music, and I agreed, having 1 piece with piano and 1 without. I was assured the school would find me an accompanist.

That was 3 weeks ago.

After a week of inquiries, when the school was still on break, I finally found out Monday who my pianist was. I learned in fact, that it was the person they had told me it WASN'T. He said he was gone all day, but we could look at the piece in the evening.

(BTW, this isn't completely uncommon; the accompanists tend to look at the music, shrug, and then perform. When I recorded for Falcone, my pianists was literally sight-reading during the recording - and he got it spot-on!)

After trying to run through it, he said NO WAY, and recommended I just find 8 min' of unaccompanied music(!) overnight, perfect, and perform THAT.

In the morning, I found the International Director, Tatyana, who insisted it would have to be the piece with piano, because the programs are already printed. I didn't point out that it wasn't uncommon to change music, but instead she insisted we approach the accompanying chair and see what he thought.

Here's what we got:
A recently retired accompanist who's considered "The GOD of brass accompanists", who's played just about every brass piece ever played, and had his own copy of Ito's "Fantasy Variations". We took 1/2 hour to run the piece, pick out a couple tricky spots, and then I saw him at the concert.

Everything went alright.