Various musical stuff
Apr. 17th, 2007 12:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunrabSunday the Montgomery Village Community Band played at Falcon's Landing, a large Air Force retirement community in Sterling, VA. It went well - Wednesday's dress rehearsal had been awful, but the concert went much, much better. There are still a couple percussion players who can't tell the difference between 6/8 and 2/4, but what can you do? The audience outnumbered the band, always a goal for community bands, and the facility also broadcast the concert over their CCTV to the people in the assisted living and nursing home areas who couldn't come to the community rooms. On the way home, we went looking for local food for a late lunch, and happened upon a newish Persian Restaurant there in Sterling, which turned out to be wonderful food and nice people - the place was empty except for us, so we chatted with the owners for a bit, stuff like that. (Rainy Sunday afternoon, and too new to have its name on the shopping center signboard out at the street, and 4:30 p.m. isn't a heavy traffic hour for restaurants anyway.)
Monday is Bel Air band rehearsal. The youngest of our tenor saxes wasn't at rehearsal - 2 of his best friends at VA Tech, one of them dead, the other one of the critically injured. So he had other stuff to think about besides rehearsal.
The 4 tenor saxes, it's odd how we pretty much span 4 generations - Bob's 80, a "Greatest Generation" type; I'm "Baby Boomer", Alicia's Gen X (mid-thirties), and John is 20. Besides the tenor, I am also using my bari in one piece, to cover a contra-alto clarinet part in a new piece, where the composer wrote in way more bass parts than most community bands can cover. No, the range on the bari isn't quite the same, but it sounds a lot more like a contra-alto than a tuba does, and besides, we need the tubas to cover the string bass and contra-bass clarinet parts as well as tuba, and there's only 3 of them. I like getting more practice at switching between instruments.
Sunday the 22nd, we leave for Austin. Monday evening we're having supper with band friends; Tuesday evening we'll probably stop by ASB rehearsal. Wednesday we're eating lunch with Steve's dad, and possibly a couple of his other relatives (there's not many left). Saturday evening is the Austin Symphonic Band's Silver Anniversary concert, followed by a big party, which we're going to - and then, way too soon on Sunday the 29th a.m., we climb back on a plane so we get back here by 1 p.m., which gives us time to nap and change clothes and be in Perry Hall before 7 p.m. to play a concert with the Baltimore Symphonic Band. (And looking only slightly more into the future, the following Sunday, May 6, is the Bel Air band's spring concert.)
Anyway, the reason I mention the details of when we're eating with whom is so that those of you I hope to visit with (Sam, Anita, Liz...), can be ready to tell me when would be a good time, working around what we're already doing, to stop by, say hi, possibly eat a meal or at least chat, when I call, probably this Thursday evening. We'll be staying with Jerry & Kathy, which is a fairly convenient in-town location (and thank you so much, guys, for the room - Steve's dad is having problems getting enough water for even one person out there in Oak Hill!)
Our sump pump worked fairly steadily today. It's stopped raining now. There are downed trees all over the place from the winds. All the traffic lights on Frederick Road (Catonsville's main street) were out of power, and a bunch of ones on roads parallel to it as well. Which didn't help the crowd around the post office. The wait today was only about half an hour; tomorrow will be MUCH worse. So I'm glad we got that done today. Last year, paying 2005 taxes, we didn't owe much to MD as partial-year residents, but for 2006, since we were residents all year, we owed state and city taxes, which of course aren't withheld from our Texas pensions. Oh well, we really can see that we get some services for our tax money here, so it's not like we shouldn't do our part.
I'm not going to bother watching CSI:Miami any more; it's become all Hummer and no cattle, if I may mix my metaphors.
Monday is Bel Air band rehearsal. The youngest of our tenor saxes wasn't at rehearsal - 2 of his best friends at VA Tech, one of them dead, the other one of the critically injured. So he had other stuff to think about besides rehearsal.
The 4 tenor saxes, it's odd how we pretty much span 4 generations - Bob's 80, a "Greatest Generation" type; I'm "Baby Boomer", Alicia's Gen X (mid-thirties), and John is 20. Besides the tenor, I am also using my bari in one piece, to cover a contra-alto clarinet part in a new piece, where the composer wrote in way more bass parts than most community bands can cover. No, the range on the bari isn't quite the same, but it sounds a lot more like a contra-alto than a tuba does, and besides, we need the tubas to cover the string bass and contra-bass clarinet parts as well as tuba, and there's only 3 of them. I like getting more practice at switching between instruments.
Sunday the 22nd, we leave for Austin. Monday evening we're having supper with band friends; Tuesday evening we'll probably stop by ASB rehearsal. Wednesday we're eating lunch with Steve's dad, and possibly a couple of his other relatives (there's not many left). Saturday evening is the Austin Symphonic Band's Silver Anniversary concert, followed by a big party, which we're going to - and then, way too soon on Sunday the 29th a.m., we climb back on a plane so we get back here by 1 p.m., which gives us time to nap and change clothes and be in Perry Hall before 7 p.m. to play a concert with the Baltimore Symphonic Band. (And looking only slightly more into the future, the following Sunday, May 6, is the Bel Air band's spring concert.)
Anyway, the reason I mention the details of when we're eating with whom is so that those of you I hope to visit with (Sam, Anita, Liz...), can be ready to tell me when would be a good time, working around what we're already doing, to stop by, say hi, possibly eat a meal or at least chat, when I call, probably this Thursday evening. We'll be staying with Jerry & Kathy, which is a fairly convenient in-town location (and thank you so much, guys, for the room - Steve's dad is having problems getting enough water for even one person out there in Oak Hill!)
Our sump pump worked fairly steadily today. It's stopped raining now. There are downed trees all over the place from the winds. All the traffic lights on Frederick Road (Catonsville's main street) were out of power, and a bunch of ones on roads parallel to it as well. Which didn't help the crowd around the post office. The wait today was only about half an hour; tomorrow will be MUCH worse. So I'm glad we got that done today. Last year, paying 2005 taxes, we didn't owe much to MD as partial-year residents, but for 2006, since we were residents all year, we owed state and city taxes, which of course aren't withheld from our Texas pensions. Oh well, we really can see that we get some services for our tax money here, so it's not like we shouldn't do our part.
I'm not going to bother watching CSI:Miami any more; it's become all Hummer and no cattle, if I may mix my metaphors.
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Date: 2007-04-17 09:33 am (UTC)What I've seen about the series (I at least used to watch the Las Vegas version) it has been, shall we say, pretentious with Caruso overturning himself this way and that. Going towards Miami Vice?