The Eastern Trombone Report

[bunrab]

Since neither of us plays trombone, we did not attend the entire Eastern Trombone Workshop, but we did go to the Grand Finale concert this evening. Reading the program, once we were there, made us wish we had in fact gone to more of it; there were many sessions that sounded like interesting topics despite being addressed to (shudder) trombones. During the day, one of the Saturday morning sessions included a recital by the entire low brass section of the Philadelphia Orchestra - so it would have included their new tubist, Carol. (Amongst the tuba world, that's all the name she needs. You say "Carol" and everyone knows that you are referring to the young woman (21) who won that audition while she was still a college undergraduate, after someone heard her playing Khatchaturian's Violin Concerto on the tuba.) In the afternoon, there was a lecture by Johan de Meij, himself a trombonist before he became better known as a premier composer for the symphonic band; his "lecture" was more or less, "here's bits of all the new works, especially new trombone pieces, that I'm writing." That would have been fun!

Anyhoo, the Grand Concert had the full Army Band, plus trombone soloists. Of note:
(1) last piece before intermission featured a trombone quartet playing with the band - an all-female trombone quartet in slinky black outfits. They were quite good, too! A few too many mute maneuvers, but that's the composer's fault, not theirs.
(2) although I didn't particularly like the piece, William Goldstein's "Colloquy" had as the feature trombonist Don Lucas, of Boston University, so bikergeek, if your friend the trombone player didn't make it down to the workshop, perhaps she can hear him playing around the New England area - he's quite good, and apparently a nice guy, as there was lots of extra-loud cheering from the various college trombonists who had taken his master class earlier in the workshop and enjoyed it a lot.
(3) The world premiere of a new work by Johan de Meij, "Canticles." Featured a bass trombone soloist. Well, de Meij has never written a piece I didn't like, and this was no exception. One of the nice things was the sensitivity of the soloist, who actually managed to play the bass trombone piano enough that we could tell that at times de Meij had the bassoon doubling the solo part. There were also a couple of lines of bassoon solo, and a nice oboe solo, in the piece. De Meij was in the audience (sitting, in fact, 2 rows directly behind me and squirrel_magnet) and got called up to take a bow. Standing O all around on that one.
(4) The last number was called "Tricked Out Trombones" and was an arrangement by one of the band members, featuring the Army Band trombone section. It started out with Wagner, with the trombones playing the Valkyries, mutated into more Wagner only in a swing tempo, then for a bit turned into Double Agent 00-Darth, yes, the James Bond theme blended with the Imperial March. And then it got stranger, as Khatchaturian dueled Ravel: the band played "Sabre Dance," the trombones played "Bolero." They eventually merged into "76 Trombones" and ended with some general bits of trombone loudness; I'm not sure I caught bits of other pieces because I was still giggling from the Sabre Bolero.
We came home by was of the Silver Diner in Laurel, where apparently most of the teenage population of Laurel was having milkshakes and arguing. Incidentally, we had forgotten the GPS unit; we are *so* proud of ourselves for finding Ft. Myer without it, and for getting out of Ft. Myer and back to the Baltimore-Washington Pkwy without it! (The routes to and from Ft. Myer are not the same. It is apparently not possible to get heah from theah, even though you can get theah from heah.) Fort Myer, for those wondering, is right next door to Arlington National Cemetary, and can most easily be found by following the signs to the Iwo Jima Memorial.

Well, Sunday *we* have a gig to play, so I need to think about some rest. I'll report on that, plus the latest in science trivia/news, next time.

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Some of you still haven't tried the Kelly Quiz!

Comments

[nentikobe.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a secondary trombone player (its my second language) that sounds like it was great fun!

I'd've given anything to hear that last piece! A well played trombone can be fantastic!