October 11th, 2003:
Hey everyone
It's been a busy couple of days, but I finally have time to write an email. I am onboard the Carnival Ship Fantasy, and have played a couple of times already with the show band. We are the main musical group, playing Broadway shows (the first tonight), jazz sets, and backing up guest performers. For me, the only thing I'm worried about musically is the Broadway stuff. There's a ton of instrument changes, and usually there is only a bar or two to switch from alto to clarinet or flute. The flute stuff is tough too, but I'll do ok I think. Also, the other sax player, who is from Canada, is better at flute so we switched on a couple parts.
My room on the ship is pretty small, but it's not too bad. The bed is fairly comfortable, so I can manage. My roommate is a 55 year-old jewish guitar player who has been doing ships for about three years, but he's cool. He's a pretty good player too. All the other musicians in the band are passable players, except the drummer. He's probably going to get canned as soon as they can find a replacement. Our first couple performances have been pretty shakey, mostly because of him.
For those of you that are interested, here's the details of what I've done since I got on the ship:
Wednesday - got here around 6pm, and there wasn't much to do. I wandered around the ship, just kind of getting my bearings. The ship looked like it was half-way taken apart, even though it had been in dry dock for 5 weeks. Carpet was pulled up everywhere, things were taken apart, and the ship was generally a mess. And passengers were supposed to board the next afternoon.
Thursday - The food on the ship isn't bad--we get to eat in the staff area, which is a step up from the crew area. Also, we can eat in most of the passenger areas, as long as we wear the right clothes (usually a collared shirt, and pants during the evenings). Besides food, mostly just meetings and drills this day. We had a short rehearsal and a welcome aboard performance, which was pretty simple.
Friday - Realized that I will probably never eat breakfast on the ship, as I usually go to sleep between 2 and 3 and get up between 10 and noon. This was a busy day. We did 2 tech runs of the Broadway show (about an hour+ each), then a rehearsal for the guest entertainers that night, then a captain's cocktail (jazz set), then the show. It was probably 5-6 hours of playing.
Today - Today is a little lighter - rehearsal at 5, two Broadway shows, and then a midnight show with a guest performer.
After a while the schedule should ease up, but right now we have more rehearsals than usual. We do get Tuesdays off in Nassau, and we also stop in Freeport. I think we are doing two cruises each week, on 3-day and one 4-day, going from Port Canaveral, Florida to Nassau and Freeport.
Anyway, I better get going. Using the internet on the ship is $0.10 a minute. If you have any news or questions, let me know.
Brian Einstein Lassiter