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back from camp....
I got back from camp yesterday. Officially, band camp ends with a full concert on Sunday afternoon, but there's a "participant celebratory dinner" at the local pub, and that's the unofficial end of camp. The first few years I went to camp, I'd either skip the 'celebratory dinner', or come home right after it; but that always felt like I was rushing the end of my vacation, and that's not something I like to do. (Most of those years had Reasons why I needed to be home by Monday morning, usually associated with offspring needing to be at the HS at 7am.)
It was the largest camp they've had (nearly 90 people!), and probably the most ambitious program as well. Lotsa new people, too. The saxophone section resolved itself into 6 altos - 3 tenors- 3 baris, so that was nice -- one of the alto players had volunteered to swap down to bari for the small ensembles, borrowed a friend's bari to get some practice, and had such fun with it that zie decided to swap down for all of camp. The entire sax section went out to lunch one day, and had a "sectional" before sectionals. No booze involved, though (still an afternoon of work to do). I stayed in the hotel on campus, in the cheap rooms (that was all they had left when I registered), but the rooms are fine, just old decor and no TV/coffee maker (I usually pack a kettle anyway, and rarely watch TV...). This year, the camp had included cafeteria privileges with a room, so I often ate there. It was camp food - there's always a couple of high schools on campus for their band camp, so the food is not adventurous at all. It's edible and nutritious and usually not horrible and "free". Food during the school year is better because there are fewer people to feed and they're less picky. It did mean that I really didn't need the kettle, because there was hot water in the cafe.
There were a couple of pieces where I looked at them and said "there are parts that this *horn* will not do. I'm not even going to try". Newer baris have a different arrangement of left hand keys and a slightly different mechanism that make those passages playable, but my old horn doesn't have those. I suppose that I should think about replacing her, but any horn that I'd want to play starts at $10K, unless I'm lucky enough to get an OpenBox or a used but well cared for horn from a local shop. I should probably check with the local shops, and ask them to call me if they get a good used bari in.... It'll probably take a couple of years to get a new-to-me horn that way.
The yard looks very different now, with the four 85' cottonwood trees gone. There's an oak tree that's got some gaps in its crown from where the cottonwood next to it was crowding it, and it will be interesting to see how long it takes to fill in. J says the tree guys wound up with three truckloads of wood chips from our trees, and that was *after* leaving us with 12-foot diameter by foot-high heaps of wood chips where they'd ground out the stumps and roots as best they could. The backyard is a lot less shaded than it was, although the deck didn't really lose any of its shade, which is good. The trees were shading a couple of gardens far more than I had intended (to be fair, 20+ years ago when I put the gardens in the trees weren't as tall or as large), and it will be nice to see the flowers-that-like-full-sun get healthier. After they get over the shock of Suddenly Much More Sun, of course.
It was the largest camp they've had (nearly 90 people!), and probably the most ambitious program as well. Lotsa new people, too. The saxophone section resolved itself into 6 altos - 3 tenors- 3 baris, so that was nice -- one of the alto players had volunteered to swap down to bari for the small ensembles, borrowed a friend's bari to get some practice, and had such fun with it that zie decided to swap down for all of camp. The entire sax section went out to lunch one day, and had a "sectional" before sectionals. No booze involved, though (still an afternoon of work to do). I stayed in the hotel on campus, in the cheap rooms (that was all they had left when I registered), but the rooms are fine, just old decor and no TV/coffee maker (I usually pack a kettle anyway, and rarely watch TV...). This year, the camp had included cafeteria privileges with a room, so I often ate there. It was camp food - there's always a couple of high schools on campus for their band camp, so the food is not adventurous at all. It's edible and nutritious and usually not horrible and "free". Food during the school year is better because there are fewer people to feed and they're less picky. It did mean that I really didn't need the kettle, because there was hot water in the cafe.
There were a couple of pieces where I looked at them and said "there are parts that this *horn* will not do. I'm not even going to try". Newer baris have a different arrangement of left hand keys and a slightly different mechanism that make those passages playable, but my old horn doesn't have those. I suppose that I should think about replacing her, but any horn that I'd want to play starts at $10K, unless I'm lucky enough to get an OpenBox or a used but well cared for horn from a local shop. I should probably check with the local shops, and ask them to call me if they get a good used bari in.... It'll probably take a couple of years to get a new-to-me horn that way.
The yard looks very different now, with the four 85' cottonwood trees gone. There's an oak tree that's got some gaps in its crown from where the cottonwood next to it was crowding it, and it will be interesting to see how long it takes to fill in. J says the tree guys wound up with three truckloads of wood chips from our trees, and that was *after* leaving us with 12-foot diameter by foot-high heaps of wood chips where they'd ground out the stumps and roots as best they could. The backyard is a lot less shaded than it was, although the deck didn't really lose any of its shade, which is good. The trees were shading a couple of gardens far more than I had intended (to be fair, 20+ years ago when I put the gardens in the trees weren't as tall or as large), and it will be nice to see the flowers-that-like-full-sun get healthier. After they get over the shock of Suddenly Much More Sun, of course.