What Rehearsals Taught Me About Making Music
- Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
- Jul 4
- 9 min read
A Conversation That Stayed With Me
A few days ago, I had a conversation with trumpeter João Lenhari, an important collaborator in the creation of Orquestra Urbana. We were reminiscing about the development of the repertoire and the recording process of our album Pelos Ares when the conversation took an unexpected turn.
Throughout that project, we held twelve rehearsals to prepare five performances and the album recording sessions. Three rehearsals preceded each concert, and another three were dedicated exclusively to the studio. Beyond preparing the repertoire, we had time to experiment with interpretations, revisit small details in the arrangements, test different ideas, listen to the ensemble, change our minds, and gradually build a shared musical language.
At one point, João described that process as an expression of a certain “visceral” relationship with artistic work. A willingness to invest time in developing a project because the act of making music itself already justified that investment, long before there was any meaningful professional or financial return.
He told me that today he finds it much harder to see that same level of commitment and personal investment in projects of this kind.
I don’t know to what extent this perception reflects a broader change in the musical landscape or simply differences between different moments in our own careers. Nor do I know whether it represents a generational shift or merely a consequence of today’s professional realities.
But that conversation stayed with me. Rather than trying to decide whether João was right or wrong, I found myself asking a different question:
What, after all, is the role of rehearsal - and of the time required for artistic maturation - in the life of a musical project?
When Rehearsals Came Before the Concerts
Looking back on my own trajectory, I realized that I have experienced very different musical realities.
During my undergraduate years at UNICAMP, nearly every ensemble I was involved with operated in much the same way. There was a fixed day every week reserved for rehearsals. The group existed continuously, regardless of whether a performance had been scheduled. And I’m not referring to university ensembles created as part of coursework, where rehearsals were built into the curriculum. I’m talking about independent projects created and maintained by the students themselves, outside the formal academic program.
That was the case with Gafieira Camisa Amarela. We rehearsed every week and regularly took that repertoire to venues such as Casa São Jorge, in Barão Geraldo, where people danced gafieira to the band’s music. I was one of the group’s arrangers and was constantly writing new arrangements to expand the repertoire.
I also led a chamber ensemble dedicated to Brazilian music that followed the same model: Caruwa.
At another point, I had an instrumental Brazilian music quartet that met every week and eventually became a finalist in the 2008 Furnas Geração Musical Award, representing the state of São Paulo at the national finals held at the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden: Rafael de Lima Quartet.
In addition, the university itself offered instrumental ensemble classes in which different groups rehearsed together every week.
At that stage of my life, rehearsals did not happen because there was a concert.
Concerts happened because there was a group of people making music together on a regular basis.
Today, I realize that this difference is more significant than it first appears.
The Professional Reality Has Changed
Twenty years later, my routine is almost the opposite.
Most of the projects I participate in begin with a concert, a recording session, or a specific invitation. Quite often there are only one or two rehearsals before the performance. In some cases, there is nothing beyond the soundcheck.
I don’t think this model is inherently wrong. Most of the time, it simply reflects the practical realities of the profession. Bringing together a group of professional musicians requires funding, everyone’s availability, and a considerable logistical effort. As both a music director and producer, I know very well the constant balance between what I would like to do artistically and what is financially possible.
Over the years, I’ve even heard musicians comment that a particular project involved too many rehearsals for the fee being offered. That observation reveals an important aspect of professional music making. Every rehearsal represents hours that could have been devoted to another paid engagement, and that reality directly influences the way many projects are planned.
That doesn’t mean this is the only possible way of working. There are still situations where a longer preparation process is possible. Projects produced by larger institutions can provide rehearsal schedules that have become increasingly rare in independent productions.
That was the case, for example, with the Forró sem Palavras Sinfônico concert alongside the Municipal Symphony Orchestra of Campinas, where we had nearly a full week of rehearsals before two performances.
What Is a Rehearsal For?
The most immediate answer seems straightforward.
We rehearse to build a collective performance. That means solving technical challenges, coordinating entrances, endings, tempo changes, articulations, and countless other details that allow an ensemble to perform together with confidence and cohesion. But bringing a repertoire to a reliable performance level and allowing an interpretation to mature are very different stages of the same process.
During the first rehearsals, the focus is usually on the most fundamental aspects of ensemble playing. The goal is to make sure the group can perform the repertoire from beginning to end without major problems, solve technically demanding passages, coordinate entrances, tempo changes, rests, counting, and other situations that require close coordination between the musicians and the conductor.
Once those issues have been addressed, the focus begins to shift. Rehearsals move toward refining interpretation and exploring details that often go unnoticed when the priority is simply getting through the music successfully. This is when the ensemble works to unify articulations, develop a more cohesive sound, define the character of each piece, refine the balance between sections, and build a shared musical identity. In repertoire that includes improvisation or greater creative freedom, this is also when musicians begin to understand more deeply what is happening musically and collectively discover more convincing ways of shaping the interpretation.
The composition already exists.
The arrangement already exists.
What continues to evolve is the way that particular group comes to interpret the music.
Individual Ability and Collective Maturation
At the same time, the number of rehearsals is only one of many variables involved in this process.
To conclude that more rehearsals necessarily produce better performances would be to oversimplify a much more complex reality.
The final result also depends on the musicians’ technical abilities, their individual preparation, their command of the musical language, the complexity of the repertoire, the group’s collective experience, and the quality of the musical direction.
A group of outstanding musicians can deliver an excellent performance with little or no rehearsal, provided everyone arrives well prepared, reads fluently, and is deeply familiar with the musical language involved.
On the other hand, a less experienced group may rehearse for weeks without reaching the same level.
Individual ability and collective working time address different aspects of music making. A great musician can give an excellent performance with very few rehearsals. The interpretive maturity of an ensemble, however, also depends on the time its members spend making music together.
I experienced this very clearly during the Chamber Project performances at Jazz at Lincoln Center. We had three rehearsals to prepare the repertoire, followed by four nights of performances, with two sets each night, for a total of eight performances.
The rehearsals were enough to establish the repertoire, solve technical issues, and develop familiarity with the music. The maturation of the performances, however, continued throughout the concerts themselves. By the end of the engagement, several musician friends who had attended both the opening and closing nights commented that it sounded as if two completely different ensembles had performed the same repertoire.
The scores had not changed.
What had changed was the time we had spent living with that music.
The Contrast Between Orquestra Urbana and Forró sem Palavras
Perhaps no comparison illustrates this reflection better than two projects from my own career.
During the recording process of the Orquestra Urbana album, we had the rare opportunity to develop a project over an extended period of time. Those twelve rehearsals went far beyond simply preparing the repertoire. They allowed us to experiment with interpretations, revisit details of the arrangements, refine the orchestra’s sound, and develop a musical identity that ultimately became part of the album itself.
Forró sem Palavras, on the other hand, followed a very different path.
Once the core repertoire had become reasonably established, many performances took place with virtually no rehearsals, even when new musicians were joining the project for the first time.
I would usually send recordings of previous performances so that each musician could prepare their part beforehand. During the soundcheck, we would read through any new arrangement, adjust beginnings and endings, and then move directly into the performance.
That approach is precisely what made it possible to keep a relatively large ensemble performing regularly in New York. Had I required multiple rehearsals before every performance, the project probably would never have gotten off the ground, given the financial limitations under which those early concerts were produced.
Even so, I often found myself wondering what might have happened if that same group had been able to spend several weeks deepening its interpretation of the repertoire. The notes themselves were already under control. That additional time could have been devoted to exploring possibilities that usually emerge only after musicians have lived with the same music for an extended period.
The Value of Rehearsal Also Depends on Context
Interestingly, many of these differences would probably go unnoticed by much of the audience.
A large portion of the Forró sem Palavras performances took place at dance festivals, where music serves a different role than it does in a concert hall. It creates the atmosphere, drives the dancing, and shapes the energy of the evening. In that setting, many of the interpretive nuances I would have liked to develop would probably have gone unnoticed by most people, even though they still mattered deeply to those of us building that interpretation together.
Those differences remain real.
They simply carry different weight depending on the context in which the music is presented.
What Stayed With Me After That Conversation
After talking with João, I realized that the real question was never how many rehearsals a project should have. Throughout my career, I have participated in projects built under very different circumstances, and I understand perfectly well why each one developed the way it did. Production conditions, budgets, musicians’ availability, and each project’s artistic goals all directly influence how much time an ensemble can devote to collective work.
I also kept thinking about the “visceral” relationship with artistic work that João had described. Looking back on my own journey, I realize that the projects that left the deepest mark on me all shared something in common. They were projects in which the musicians genuinely believed in the artistic vision and, because of that, were willing to invest time, energy, and attention in developing a shared musical language.
Some working processes provide only the time necessary to prepare a concert. Others allow an ensemble to live with the repertoire long enough to develop its own way of interpreting it. Whenever I have the opportunity to experience that second kind of process, I think fondly of projects such as the preparation of Pelos Ares with Orquestra Urbana and the Chamber Project residency at Jazz at Lincoln Center. In both cases, the artistic growth that emerged was a direct consequence of the time, attention, and energy those musicians were able to devote to the same body of music.
Listen to the Recordings
The two projects discussed throughout this article eventually became recordings that document different moments in that process of collective musical maturation.
About the Author
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima is a composer, arranger, music director, and educator. A Latin Grammy-nominated composer and recipient of 13 DownBeat Awards, he teaches, mentors, and supports musicians in the areas of composition, arranging, musical creativity, and artistic development.
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