Many Things

Posted on May 28, 2008

Well, a week has gone by, and a lot has happened. My parents came to town to spend some time and see my concert. I was very busy getting the house ready for their arrival. The house looks pretty good, and seems so much more spacious now that there isn’t cluttered junk everywhere. Can I keep it this way? Hahaha, probably not for long.

Friday evening was long and tiring. I had to rent a truck to move equipment to the hall. It took a while and there was an accident in front of the rental place. Since things were not normal, I forgot the key to the shed and it put us a little behind schedule. Traffic was bad as well. We got everything in the hall, horns passed out and we were ready to start the rehearsal at 7 PM, as planned. I was already tired. The rehearsal went really well. I can not believe we actually got through all of the material in this one rehearsal. Although the TYBB has been working on the music for about 5 weeks, this was the only time the whole band, 32 players in TYBB and 35 Alumni, could get together and put the program together. We worked very hard in the rehearsal, and it was looking to be an amazing product. Afterwards, we hung out a little at Bo’s.

Saturday morning came fast, and we had a short rehearsal at Regency with the Triangle Wind Ensemble for their Memorial Day concert. We played the ending of 1812 Overture and Stars and Stripes Forever with them. The concert that evening was really nice. We had a picnic dinner there and enjoyed the show. The TYBB/Alumni ended the concert with a bang. it went really well.

Sunday evening was the TYBE/TYBB/Alumni concert. This was the last concert of the season for us, and because of the number of performers, was a huge task in putting together. The TYBE did a really good job, and Jon Caldwell put the program together like a pro. There were some challenges, as rehearsal conflicts were making things tough to rehearse. They pulled it together. The 2nd half of the show was the large combined TYBB and Alumni band. A total of about 65 players, and a lot of talent on that stage. The music was challenging, but all stuff you would kill to hear a lot of brass play. The performance was great. There were very few flaws, and the band was fairly responsive and spontaneous. The crowd was pretty large, a bit bigger than we usually get, and the hall seemed pretty well full up. The audience was definitely responding well to the music. The ending, when we added the 40 players from TYBE to the end of 1812 Overture was amazing. There was a lot of sound there.

Monday I took my parents to Wrightsville Beach and we hung out there for a day or so. it was really nice not to have a bunch of things to do for a couple of days. The parents are gone now, and It is back to regular routine of lessons for the week, but my schedule is a bit lighter now. Summer, here we come.

The big concert Sunday was a personal best for me. I was so proud to have so many people return to make music again. Most of the alumni that came back are actually studying music in college, but all of them still like to play brass band stuff. It was the history of my time as director of the band on stage at one time. The fact that it sounded absolutely amazing was a plus, because the music I programmed was so much fun to conduct and create a product with. I will never forget this one. It lines up as one of the greatest musical experiences of my life. Picture:  1812 Combined Bands