While I will acknowledge that there is a measure of vanity in posting this, I (once more) do want to thank Dorico for the difference it makes in my life as a professional musician. Saturday night, I (to my eternal disbelief) won a Juno award. Those are the national Canadian music awards – the Canuck Grammies if you will. My baroque period instrument ensemble Rosa Barocca, the irrepressible baroque cellist Elinor Frey and I collaborated on an album of early Italian cello concerti (aptly named “Early Italian Cello Concertos”) which won Classical Album of the Year (small ensemble) in a rather competitive field. The project was fun, and also based on solid musiclogical research on Elinor’s part. She performed on two different cellos and did the Tartini concerto with an underhand bow grip, as we know Vandini used such a “gamba-like” grip.
Dorico featured very prominently in the creation of this project. I created two performing editions from manuscripts, one for the Vivaldi RV 414 which has been previously published but needed an update, and one for the Sammartini concerto for Violoncello Piccolo (or violin) - the first extant mention of that instrument by name – which has been recorded once before, but I believe is still unpublished.
First off, each first draft of those scores took less than day to create because of Dorico’s intelligent design. Secondly, the figured bass tool made everything easy for our continuo players (organist Wendy Markosky and harpsichordist Mélisande McNabney). They play from score, like most do, but appreciated the design of the figures as well as the way they could be bracketed. They wrote almost no additional notes in their material. Third, the ease with which I could create different layouts according to who would use paper and who would use iPads. This is becoming a critical point in the business and I feel Dorico is ahead of the game for ease of use in this department. Of course, the usual features that set Dorico apart, such as cues were used extensively to the joy of many.
Rosa is very used to getting great in-house material by now. Most players make it a habit to thank me for the quality of the material, and while I am the one operating the software, there is no question that the tool I use is of tremendous, even critical help.
Of course, the acceptance speech did not include a mention of Dorico, but it was part of the team that made this recording a success. We are not out of the woods yet: long suspension series with overlapping lines done natively would be a great gift to all of us in the field. But I really feel I must give thanks where thanks are due. A thousand thank-yous to the team on their beautiful work and their constant attention to detail.
Thank you Dorico.
