One phrase I use all the time in rehearsal is, “I’m coming to your neighborhood next.”

Usually I’ve stopped the orchestra to work with one section. Maybe the cellos are rushing something, or the second violins are missing an entrance, or the violas need to fix a bowing. I turn toward them, we work for a few minutes, and meanwhile everyone else has a choice.

They can check out.

Or they can rehearse too.

Students tend to think rehearsal works in turns. The conductor is working with the cellos, so the violins wait. Then the conductor works with the violins, so the cellos wait. If your bow is not moving, apparently you are temporarily unemployed.

But an orchestra cannot really work that way.

If I am fixing a rhythm with the cellos, I will often ask everyone else to count for them. If another section is playing, look at your own part. Where do you enter? Do you have the same rhythm? Is the correction I just gave them going to apply to you in thirty seconds?

Support the people who are playing.

That is rehearsal too.

There is something slightly ridiculous about spending several minutes fixing an issue in one section, turning to the next section, and discovering the exact same problem completely untouched. Everyone heard the correction. Nobody thought it belonged to them.

That is one of the things I am trying to change.

A student can be a very good player and still not know how to rehearse well. Those are separate skills.

You can play your own part beautifully and never notice what the people around you are doing. You can start talking every time the conductor stops. You can sit silently while another section rehearses and still not actually be listening.

Sitting quietly is better than disrupting rehearsal, obviously, but that is a pretty low bar.

I want students listening for how the music fits together. I want them counting for another section when that section needs help. I want them following their own music while somebody else plays. I want them noticing that the articulation I just fixed across the room appears in their measure too.

And I want them doing some of that without me having to narrate every single thing.

Rehearsal time disappears unbelievably quickly. If I spend five minutes working with one section, I cannot afford for everyone else to lose those five minutes completely. More importantly, I do not want forty individual musicians waiting for me to arrive at their stand. I want an orchestra listening to itself.

When students start doing that, the room changes.

They fix things before I get to them. They know where they are in the music. They hear what another section is doing. They are ready.

We are definitely not there every day.

Sometimes I stop conducting and three conversations begin before my hands have made it all the way down. Sometimes I work with one section, turn around, and realize another section has been staring peacefully into space for the last five minutes.

So I remind them:

Count for them.

Look at your part.

Support the people who are playing.

I’m coming to your neighborhood next.

Because rehearsal does not stop just because you are not the one playing.