Rehearsal planning gone overboard

Up at 3:30 am again - this time I spent a fair bit of my awake time preparing for the crazy couple of weeks ahead, all culminating with my much bloged about concert with the local Baroque Orchestra and my chamber choir's performance of Bach Cantata #4 and Handel's "Dixit Dominus".

First realization I came up with was that the Bach, being about 20 minutes, and the Handel, give or take, 40 minutes adds up to being a rather "short" program. As it stands now, the first half and the intermission are the same length! So I've contacted the artistic director of the orchestra and we are going to add a Telemann concerto to the first half, adding about 15 minutes when all is said and done (walking, talking etc). This is fine and dandy - but now I have to learn it, and find time in the constraints of the orchestra rehearsal to rehearse it with them!

Here is the rehearsal schedule for the weekend after next.

Friday AM 10-12:30 - Orchestra and Soloists
Friday PM 7:30-10:00 - Orchestra, Soloists and Choir
Saturday Noon - 2:30 PM - Dress Rehearsal
Sunday 3 PM - Concert

Here's my calculation for rehearsal time with the orchestra (keeping in mind that under the Musician's Union Agreement, a 2 1/2 hour service has a 20 minute break, so you only really get 2 hours and 10 minutes, or 140 minutes to rehearse at each orchestra service).

Rehearsal time = performance time x 2.5 (i.e. for every minute a work takes to perform, I allocate two and a half minutes of rehearsal)

Total amount of time needed for soloists and the Telemann = 50 minutes, which equals 125 minutes - completely doable, 15 minutes to spare

Total amount of time needed for chorus movements = 41 minutes, which equals 102 1/2 minutes - also completely doable - with 40 minutes to spare even (and we'll need them I'm sure).

Ok - just needed to put that in writing. In the immortal words of my Mom-in-law "We can do this!"

In other news - as part of my Lenten Discipline this year, I'm going to try to exercise at least 30 minutes a day (hmmm... maybe I can get away with 12 minutes, and just use the reverse of the calculation above?)