Home

Wow. I'm home. It is nice to be done with school for the summer, but this is the second year now that I've found myself strongly wishing school was not done and it would continue through the summer. Its not like I want to do summer school, but I just love the atmosphere of SPU so much that I wish I could capture it and bottle it up and douse myself in a beautiful cologne of SPUness. (wow no clue where that came from...) But you know what I mean, right? Its that feeling of a place where you feel like you belong; a place where you are accepted and respected, not just as a musician, but as a person. Don't get me wrong, home is great, but I will miss that something more. I am looking forward to spending more time with my family and with my PCC family. I hope this summer isn't as cool as they say it is going to be or I just might go postal...oh wait Andrew already took that job for the summer. *BA-DUM-CHING* Well I am off to see Mahler 4 performed by Orchestra Seattle. Its been awhile since I've been to a concert by myself. I'm actually kinda looking forward to it. No distractions, ya know. (Kirstin, you are not a distraction, :-P) Tschüss!

Quick Correction

It was brought to my attention that the concert (Reconciled: Revisited) on Sunday, May 18th is at 7pm, not 7:30pm.

Frustrations and Musical Matrices

Working this weekend tired me out. I can definitely tell is is spring. I don't want to do anything and when I do something, I feel tired and like I don't want to to anything else. Maybe its just because its becoming the end of the year very quickly and I'm seeing that some of my friends are already done with school and I want to be also. I'm just having a hard time focusing on anything besides horn and theory. I'm getting really bored and ticked off in Wind Symphony too. I was ready to perform the music about a month ago and people make so many stupid mistakes. I mean you really have to try hard to play 40 cents sharp and miss accidentals all the time. Thalia is getting better. The music is finally getting to a somewhat acceptable form (at least Hanson isn't yelling at the orchestra anymore) and the sub for principal horn was here last week and he's really good. I like playing with him. Brass Choir is basically done. We're playing 2 pieces for the concert Friday. The duet I'm playing with Kirstin is going really well. I'm excited to play it on Thursday. I'm starting to get a little nervous about En Foret. My practice sessions have been really good recently, but I still haven't played with Krysta. I think I'm going to go see I Puritani at Seattle Opera Wednesday night. I need an excuse to escape from all this chaos.

Theory was really good today. Andrew, Kirstin and I all totally understood what Dr Newby was talking about and we were rocking it. We analyzed this Bartok duet in class and we had it figured out in like 5 minutes and we spent awhile during class ripping it apart and looking at all the different pieces. It was really good. Then we entered the MATRIX. We learned about serialism which is 12 tone music. I don't have time to explain it or the complete mental capacity to do so. Basically you have all 12 semitones and you can't repeat one of them until all 12 have been stated. The order those 12 tones are played is called a Tone Row. The matrix is the 12 transpositions of those intervals (144 numbers). Confusing, huh? We rocked it. And I got an A on that Debussy Prelude we turned in (the Cathedral one). Sweet.

I think I smell a rant. So we had to take this English Placement test first quarter freshman year and I scored 1 point too low from testing out of having to take a class. So now I had to fight to not take it next quarter (which I can't because of how many credits I already have). I got the hold taken off my registration for tomorrow (Fall Quarter), but now I'm going to try and see if I can get out of taking this class altogether. I think its stupid that I have to take it because I get A's on basically everything and basically all the papers I've written in 2 years. I guess I will just have to see what happens. Some of SPU's policies are stupid and this is definitely one of them.

Here's the upcoming things I'm playing:
May 15 – 1:00pm: Duet with Kirstin (Practicum), Bach Theatre
May 16 – 7:30pm: Wind Symphony, First Free Methodist Church
May 18 – 7:30pm: Reconciled (Wind Symphony/Gospel Choir), First Free
May 22 – 1:00pm: Solo (Practicum), First Free Methodist Church
May 29 – 7:30pm: Thalia Symphony Orchestra, First Free, ($15, $10 students)


Oh and check out Battles. Those guys are crazy. Their music is awesome.

Catching Up

Greetings one and all from the pit of SPU. Things have been busy as usual. Carmen went very well. Those were two long days of playing. The shows were 3 hours in length (which included a 20 minute intermission). I met several horn players and made connections in 4 orchestras in the area. And had fun while doing it. The drawback though was the fact that all the extra time for rehearsals and the shows, plus squeezing work in around the shows completely exhausted me. Unfortunately the next week consisted of a German and Theory mid-term. Those 2 weeks kicked my butt. The Brass Choir concert on Tuesday went very well. In addition to playing in the ensemble, I played 2 movements of an Alec Wilder horn sonata. I also was honored with the opportunity to premiere one of my compositions, a horn trio. I have the recording on my MySpace music page. Let me know what you think. I would appreciate any thoughts.

For now I am preparing an Otto Nicolai duet with Kirstin for Practicum on Thursday. The piece is early 19th century and light sounding, but it is about 7 minutes long and is quite tiring. Learning a piece like this has been very useful and has been a huge help with ensemble playing. Friday, May 16 the SPU Wind Symphony is playing our Spring concert at 7:30pm at First Free Methodist Church. May 18th we bring back Reconciled, this time at First Free.

The past few days have been nice and have been a chance to relax of sorts. Thursday, Kirstin and I went downtown and picked up tickets for More Music at the Moore. We also saw the movie 21. It was pretty good. Definitely better than I expected. Friday night, Andrew, Kirstin and I went to More Music at the Moore. Great show. DBR is a musical genius. This show was completely acoustic. It amazes me the way that a concept like that can be carried out to such a high degree of musicianship and entertainment.

I'm closing at work the next two nights. I had a lesson this morning working on the duet. It went really well and Rodger had some great insights, as always. Now I am relaxing before I have to go to work, watching one of my favorite movies, Die Hard, with Andrew (he's never seen it!).

More to come later...

The Lockdown Drill and more Carmen

This morning started with an all campus "lockdown" drill from 10:40-11:00. Music Theory started at 10:30, so we were walking down to class and we watched Marsh and Newby get into Newby's car and drive away. We were like "well there went our professors...". Apparently since there was a drill, they just postponed class until 11:00 and went to Starbucks. So we turned around and Andrew and I went up to Queen Anne (he to Jamba and I to Peet's Coffee (one of my favorite coffee shops)). Dr. Hanson was sitting in Peet's doing some work (I guess everyone just left campus for the lockdown drill). Class was good. Newby explained more of Set Theory and it makes a lot more sense now. He said once you get used to it, its actually easier than roman numeral analysis. I guess time will tell. Andrew experimented with it when we got back (of course) and came up with a really weird, but awesome piece of music.

After the chiropractor, I actually had a little time to take a nap before heading to rehearsal. It was very nice (and much needed). Carmen is proving to be very interesting. The horn section is getting shuffled around and people are missing rehearsals, so other people are coming in to cover the part for the night and we're switching parts around to get them covered. I hope we can pull it off. As it is, I'm playing a different part for each of the shows. I'm playing 4th Saturday night and 2nd on Sunday afternoon. It won't be a problem, but there's a few songs I've never played 4th. It won't be a problem, but its a little scary to think about. The first time you ever play something will be at a performance where it costs like $35 to get into. Ah well life goes on. Now I'm just hanging out and listening to Tosca - so far my favorite opera. I really have only began my opera journey. My interest really has only started this year. I am finally realizing the incredible beauty of it and how powerful it can be. I've only seen 2 operas live (The Flying Dutchman - Wagner and Tosca - Puccini) and I do like Wagner, but Dutchman is not my favorite. Carmen is the first one I've actually played. I really like it, but I do think Tosca still wins. Enough opera rambling.

Migraines and PCC

Today was quite an interesting day. It started with Kirstin's migraine, the first since the Reconciled concert (March 30) which was a really good run. I had music theory with Dr. Newby at 10:30 and he lectured about so much stuff, it was unbelievable. We learned that theory is only to be done if you are going to have fun, which makes sense cause it royally sucks if you aren't having fun. To quote "and if you're not having fun, an hour will seem like a freakin week." Words for the wise. We started looking at Prelude VI from Book I in class. We talked about pitch class as opposed to keys and how sometimes pitch classes will formulate modes (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian (natural minor), Locrian), but other times will be tonally ambiguous. We began talking about Set Theory, which we just barely started talking about and I hardly understand. Set Theory is a method of writing/analysis which is entirely number based. For example, if you have the pitches A Bb C D F in your pitch class, you can assign those pitches numbers. Each half step is one number. Let me assign the pitch class numbers.
A = 0, Bb = 1, C = 3, D = 5, F = 8
Now when you go to write, you use number formulas instead of dealing with standard chords and pitches. This was the birth of atonal music. I'm stopping here because I don't fully understand the concept yet and I'm sure I'm explaining something incorrectly. That is what happens when you get 2 hours of Dr Newby with no break and no warning. Your brain freaking explodes.

The rest of the day proved even more interesting yet. I started to feel weird on the way to the chiropractor. I got in and got adjusted really fast and was definitely feeling a headache coming and realized it was definitely a migraine. Yay, both Kirstin and I have migraines. What a fun couple. I had work at PCC in like a half hour, so I took 2 Excedrin and worked from 3:30pm-12:30am. Which, by the way, is not fun with a migraine. Thankfully the Excedrin kicked in enough so it wasn't unbearable. It was a pretty slow evening, but definitely eventful, mostly thanks to Kjell.

Now I'm just unwinding from the day and am going to head off to bed. Yet another adventure filled day awaits, just lingering in the distance.

Carmen and Debussy

Carmen is great fun. I am having a ton of fun playing 4th horn! The orchestra is great (although small). After 2 rehearsals, we already sound pretty darn good. Tomorrow the singers are added, although I will miss for work. Too bad. But seeing how I'll be there Wednesday and Thursday too, I don't think I will die.

Speaking of dying, I'm taking a short break from analyzing Prelude X from Book 1 of Debussy's Preludes for Piano. It is a strange piece that uses a series of ascending, open 5ths over drones that move down by whole steps starting on G and arriving at C at the end of the first page (all we are working on for the assignment). I believe it is intended overall to be in C major, but there is a section that I think can be analyzed in E lydian (basically E major with an extra # (A#) - or B major starting on the 4th). I apologize if that confused you (it makes my head hurt too). I cannot be held liable for any head injury thus inflicted. Bis spaeter!

In the Eye of the Storm

Due to recent demand, I have emerged from the hurricane of events in which I live from day to day in order to impart further insight and observations to the masses.

My life is full of music. Everything reminds me of something I've heard or played. Sometimes that's really cool. But it can get annoying too. Part of my education is becoming familiar with tons and tons of music. I spend time listening to different works with scores and studying pieces I haven't played yet in preparation for playing them in the future. The library here on campus is a great resource. They have a ton of CDs and scores to most major works.

I don't get a chance to talk to some of you who read this very often so I will give you a quick update on some of the concerts I have been able to play recently and coming up soon. I still play with the Thalia Symphony, but instead of assistant horn, I've been moved the 3rd position (a great part) from now on. We are preparing a concert of Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer, Stamitz's Viola Concerto and Dvorak's 7th Symphony in d minor. Our last concert consisted of the Grieg Piano Concerto and the Northwest premier of Grieg's c minor Symphony. I was also able to fill in as an assistant horn for Seattle Philharmonic when they played Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony a month or so ago.

Starting tomorrow night, I will begin rehearsal for Bizet's Carmen with Bellevue Opera. This is the first time I will play an opera. I'm looking forward to the excitement and challenge that goes along with performing opera. Rehearsing every night in Renton will be a challenge that will hopefully pay off. I've now listened through Carmen twice (once with a score) and I really enjoy this opera. I will keep you updated with how the process of preparing for this opera unfolds.

Illuminations

Music can be such an inspiration sometimes. Any form can bring out such wild emotion and keen interest. Here I am, starting my horn blog off with a post inspired by a trombone solo album. What a horrible person I am. I have now listened through the album "Illuminations" featuring Joe Alessi on Trombone twice since purchasing the album this afternoon. The technical brilliance is stunning and his tone is too beautiful for words. This is secondary to the feeling his playing incites. His playing is such an illumination (pardon the pun), into the world of virtuoso classical performance. First, it shows beauty is possible for any vessel to produce (even out the bell of a trombone). I believe as humans and more pertinently, musicians, we should never play just for our own sake, but for the good of those around us. Don't get me wrong, you should always find joy in your music (even if you're playing because you have to). My point is that no matter the outlet, music should positively impact those around us. Whether a trombone solo, a rap artist or God forbid, a country band, music should be focused on the impact it has on the audience, not necessarily how you, the performer, feel about it. I would be interested to hear thoughts of my colleagues on this idea.
I am sure most of you are unfamiliar with this work, but this is merely one example. This sense of inspiration can be derived from anything. Even so, something inspirational for one person may not say anything to another. This is about you finding what inspires you to perform, compose or direct music with the mind set of positively impacting those around you.
I hope this blog will be a place where musical discussions and ideas can be tossed around, and opinions shared for the good of all.