I know from my music days that everyone was expected to learn the piece on their own, or in small groups (for instance, on vocal pieces people would assemble to

I know from my music days that everyone was expected to learn the piece on their own, or in small groups (for instance, on vocal pieces people would assemble to learn the group piece and then work on uniformity of tone), and then when we would go to rehearsal the point of it would be to iron out timings and building a feel for the piece as a whole. The only hotspot moments were when you were doing solo or standout work, which by necessity would mean that you would be rehearsing your sections with the whole group as, for instance, if a random tenor dropped a note that can be covered by everyone else, but if the soloist does it then it can make the whole ensemble look bad.