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...