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Back from Band Camp
Aug. 15th, 2023 11:59 amwhee!!
I got upgraded from the single Annex room, and good grief it was an upgrade! The Annex rooms are tiny, the single has a twin bed, a small dresser, a small desk+chair, a tiny bathroom -- small toilet on one end, small wall-hung sink in the middle, the smallest shower unit they could find at the other end -- and a view of the cafeteria roof. It was barely big enough to practice in. The room I got this time had a queen bed, a large desk + chair, a large dresser, a full closet, a comfortable chair, two nightstands, a huge bathroom, and a patio door opening onto a lake front patio. Since I got a room with a larger bed, J came up for the weekend, partly to go to the concerts and partly to look for penny squishers and MI historical markers. He sent a lot of info off to the person who runs the MI historical marker database....
Camp went well - some difficult music, and some less difficult that we ran only a couple of times before the performance. The focus of this session was a world premiere composed for Band Camp -- the composer was on campus for the last few days, and did a fair amount of "re-composing" as he heard it performed by actual musicians and not MIDI instruments. I got really wet one day at camp -- I was on my way to afternoon rehearsal and the clouds just opened up. I was wearing a rainjacket, but my shoes/socks and trousers got soaked. I took my shoes off during rehearsal so that I didn't leave my feet in wet shoes all afternoon, then went back to the room and stuffed washcloths into the shoes, and they were fine the next day. But otherwise the weather was nice. I ate a lot of meals on campus, because it was easy and quick, and there were always other people to eat/talk with. Some people claim that the camp food is terrible, but it's not really. It's not fine dining by any means, but it's edible and reasonably nutritious, and honestly, they're feeding 400-600 people (mostly high school kids up for their band camps) in 2 hours.
J and I wandered off to Traverse City on Sunday morning, for breakfast and penny squishers and dodging rain-drops.
The new sax is really, really nice. Esme is fine, but there is a reason they don't build them like that any more. I was able to play the low-A parts as written(!), and doing octave jumps is a lot easier than on the sax with the bent+brazed octave key. I still need to figure out the quirks of the new sax, but as I told JB, I'd rather suck for a week than for a month or more (a week at band camp is worth a couple of months of 2 hrs a week rehearsals as far as getting used to a new horn). I don't know what the new sax's name is yet -- I know it's a she, but don't have a name.
I got upgraded from the single Annex room, and good grief it was an upgrade! The Annex rooms are tiny, the single has a twin bed, a small dresser, a small desk+chair, a tiny bathroom -- small toilet on one end, small wall-hung sink in the middle, the smallest shower unit they could find at the other end -- and a view of the cafeteria roof. It was barely big enough to practice in. The room I got this time had a queen bed, a large desk + chair, a large dresser, a full closet, a comfortable chair, two nightstands, a huge bathroom, and a patio door opening onto a lake front patio. Since I got a room with a larger bed, J came up for the weekend, partly to go to the concerts and partly to look for penny squishers and MI historical markers. He sent a lot of info off to the person who runs the MI historical marker database....
Camp went well - some difficult music, and some less difficult that we ran only a couple of times before the performance. The focus of this session was a world premiere composed for Band Camp -- the composer was on campus for the last few days, and did a fair amount of "re-composing" as he heard it performed by actual musicians and not MIDI instruments. I got really wet one day at camp -- I was on my way to afternoon rehearsal and the clouds just opened up. I was wearing a rainjacket, but my shoes/socks and trousers got soaked. I took my shoes off during rehearsal so that I didn't leave my feet in wet shoes all afternoon, then went back to the room and stuffed washcloths into the shoes, and they were fine the next day. But otherwise the weather was nice. I ate a lot of meals on campus, because it was easy and quick, and there were always other people to eat/talk with. Some people claim that the camp food is terrible, but it's not really. It's not fine dining by any means, but it's edible and reasonably nutritious, and honestly, they're feeding 400-600 people (mostly high school kids up for their band camps) in 2 hours.
J and I wandered off to Traverse City on Sunday morning, for breakfast and penny squishers and dodging rain-drops.
The new sax is really, really nice. Esme is fine, but there is a reason they don't build them like that any more. I was able to play the low-A parts as written(!), and doing octave jumps is a lot easier than on the sax with the bent+brazed octave key. I still need to figure out the quirks of the new sax, but as I told JB, I'd rather suck for a week than for a month or more (a week at band camp is worth a couple of months of 2 hrs a week rehearsals as far as getting used to a new horn). I don't know what the new sax's name is yet -- I know it's a she, but don't have a name.
