Mirror, Mirror, on the wall....

[jennlk]

...I've become my mother, after all.(1)

Not really, but I feel like quoting Gramma, as passed down through Mom: "I'm exhausted. I've been *charming* all day!" Early last week, the band director at the high school sent out an urgent plea for parents to help out at the district music festivals. Now, I'd missed the Pre-Festival concert due to FCB Rehearsal, so I was planning on being at the Festival for the CHS bands anyway. And I wasn't able to work at last year's festival (I didn't even make it over for the CHS band performances), so I said that I'd be willing to work a few hours, as long as I could be home when DB got home from school. Monday I got my schedule -- 8am to 2pm, supervising in the assembly area. Whee! Actually, it wasn't too bad, but it was quite a bit of time in a less than comfortable chair. And I wound up at the Information Table. Good thing I know where the bathrooms are, and how Festival works. There was a lot of quiet time, as well. I kind of expected that, so I took my FCB music and studied it -- got a few 'looks' from the visiting band directors. Apparently they don't often see parents studying music when they go to Festival.

The CHS concert band got all Is. The WS is very good, and I expect that they got all Is as well. I felt that they played very well, but I'm not a judge. I do know that they got a I for sight-reading. The Wind Symphony was the next-to-last group to go, and their scores hadn't been posted by the time we left. I'll find out tomorrow. I also listened to the Saline WS, and I didn't think they were as good -- they did a Sousa march and it felt like they were trying to play it as a concert march. Very little Sousa is actual 'concert' music, and this march isn't one of those. It wasn't nearly as crisp as it should have been. And they sounded unsure of the dissonances in As Summer Was Just Beginning. When you've got dissonances and resolving chords written, you have to sound confident of them. Otherwise, it just sounds like you've made a mistake.

jebra -- the WS did a piece called Antithigram by Jack Stamp, and I think Damien might be interested in it. It's like Tempered Steel, only not so much. (They also did Holst's Second Suite for Band, and I recognised it as Holst about 10 bars in....very distinctive.)




(1) Not that this is a bad thing, really. I like my mother.

Comments

[jebra.livejournal.com]

Hmmm . . . I tend to like Jack Stamp. Poking around on the Net a bit, I found I could give a listen to Antithigram (http://www.manhattanbeachmusic.com/audio/antithigram-ms.mp3) right here at home. So I did. I think I like it. So does The Spouse. This bodes well, in my book.