The All-New Bunrab

Um, a mascot for being in the House of the Bee for Knitting and Crochet Blog Week? I suppose that if I had time to do anything, it could be an amigurumi bee,  but I don't have time to do that this week. This week is totally taken up with music, in real life, since I have three concerts to play this weekend. I know what I'll do! I'll play Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee at some point while practicing.

And I will have to practice, because I found out at tonight's rehearsal that the alto sax is really sick, and if she doesn't get better by Saturday, I'll need to play alto, and I'd rather not sight-read at the concert; there's a couple of short solo spots. So practice it is. Along with practicing the euphonium I bought last week, and the clarinet someone gave me last month.

Did I tell y'all about the euphonium?

When Steve died, I sold most of his instruments. I only kept the bass trumpet, because it was the smallest and the one he had bought most recently - and the one that would bring in the least money if sold, so selling the others made more sense. That includes Steve's euphonium, which 40 years earlier had been Jerry's student euphonium. If I had known that I was going to want to play the euphonium, I would have kept it, but I didn't know then. Anyway, what I figured out recently is that what I want to do is play in a TubaChristmas or two in Steve's memory, and maybe, just maybe, even participate in a reading session at the Army Band's annual Tuba-Euphonium Workshop. Might not be good enough for that this coming January, but I'm pretty sure I can get good enough for TubaChristmas. So, a bass trumpet wouldn't work for TubaChristmas - even though it's in the same range as a euphonium, and it's a valved brass instrument, it's really not the same thing - it's far more like a trombone in tone, and in fact, uses a trombone mouthpiece. Which isn't nearly as useful for practicing to potentially play the euphonium as you'd think - the mouthpieces are different enough in size and shape that I need to work on it quite a bit still.

Anyway. So I went back over to Baltimore Brass, where the bass trumpet was from, and sold it back to them as a trade-in on a euphonium. It's an inexpensive student euphonium, a Chinese brand, and just a three-valve - but that's OK, three-valve fingering is certainly what I was practicing on the trumpet. And three valves are certainly adequate for anything TubaChristmas can throw at me; that's not music with virtuoso solos that require faster alternate fingerings. And so I've been practicing my new euphonium - I can play scales in a couple of keys, reliably hitting the notes I'm aiming at for about an octave and a half, having a little trouble with the notes below the low B-flat, and I can't hit the low E at all yet, and I am having trouble with the notes above the high E, too. But hey, I've been playing the euphonium for all of a week. I'm doing OK for one week. I actually read the euphonium part to a version of Amazing Grace that one of the bands has. Slowly, but I was playing euphonium music from a euphonium part on a euphonium for the very first time.

Euphonium, by the way, is Greek for "good sound thingy."

My sounds aren't there yet - my attacks are still quite buzzy, and the tone isn't smooth between octaves. And on those extra low and extra high notes, I don't reliably hit the one I'm aiming for right off. More practice needed.

If I had kept Steve's euphonium, trying to play it would probably make me cry, so maybe it's just as well I didn't keep that one. As it is, I'm sure that finally doing TubaChristmas will make me cry. But better to do it on a new euphonium so that every single breath doesn't make me think how much better Steve sounded on it. And - I didn't know then that that's what would make sense now. I had no way of knowing what would feel right later on.

Steve would have turned 67 this Thursday.

Not much about knitting and crochet in this post, is there?

It has been a musicky couple of weeks. Friday a week ago, we went to a BSO concert. Piano soloist for the Prokofiev was spectacular; it must have been exhausting for the concertmaster just sitting next to her. She did two encores, each one faster: first an arrangement of Rondo a la Turk that sounded like something that Horowitz might have done, and then Flight of the Bumblebee, faster than I have ever heard it on any instrument whatsoever. The second half was Symphony Fantastique, and it was great - the tubas nailed their solo, and they got to stand up and take a bow for it, and the entire thing was just wonderful.

Tuesday night, we got to watch the BSO rehearsing for the upcoming concert - it was the first rehearsal where all the choruses and the orchestra were together, for rehearsing Carmina Burana. It was fascinating watching Alsop's rehearsal technique - and also impressive to see the professionalism of the orchestra; any community band musician will recognize what I mean when I say that when she stops, they stop - if she stops on the first note of an eight-note triplet, NOBODY plays the second note. And nobody starts talking immediately, either. Wish we could get even 1/100th of that into our community groups.

And Friday we attended the performance of Carmina. The first piece was actually a piece of Samuel Barber's Medea, and Alsop gave a short lecture on the plot and had the orchestra play a couple of measures of the meaningful themes. THat is one scary piece - which goes with the plot, yes - if you don't know it, look it up (small hint: she eats her children.) The Carmina went off beautifully. The baritone was slightly more restrained than in rehearsal - he had to be; he had several people cracking up a bit during rehearsal with his gestures to accompany "Ego sum abbas;" there still were gestures that were nicely expressive of the segment, though. He will be worth watching - anyone who can be that expressive and who clearly is having that much fun doing it, while singing well, can probably get work anywhere. The program notes translated "wafna" as "woe." The tenor was an excellent roasted swan. And the soprano wore a red dress that rustled, to go with the lyrics in one of her verses. Alsop also had a Q&A session after the concert - I enjoy those; we've stayed for them several times in the past. Turned out there were people from the Cincinnati Opera in the audience, among other things.

Saturday morning we had a dress rehearsal in Bel Air. I do not rehearse well at 10 a.m. And Sunday afternoon was the concert - it went off reasonably well, though not perfect. The audience liked it. Well, it's hard to go wrong with "Four Scottish Dances" with that drunken bassoon solo, and then the music from the 3rd "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie.

Monday night, Bel Air starts rehearsing for Maryland Community Band Day, and Wednesday night down in Montgomery Village, we have our last Band Day committee meeting, before rehearsal; my part is pretty much finished, except for playing bari sax in three of the eight bands that will be performing! Between those three bands and my committee/volunteer t-shirt, I will have five clothing changes that day...

Oh yeah, we settled on the house, it's ours; the painters and electricians are doing their thing and should be finished by the end of next week, and the windows should be here by then, so we can probably move in right after band day. We haven't started packing yet.

Klezmer Nutrcracker Shirim - not only a good chunk of the Nutcracker Ballet, but also Romanian Rhapsody (Enesco), Hungarian Rhapsody (Brahms), lots of Satie, and more, all in a very jazzy klezmer style. Well done, danceable, fun. Definitely not elevator music.
Trombones Under the Tree - I think the title says it all. A trombone quartet plays lots of traditional stuff, and some of the Nutcracker, speaking of Nutcracker. This is the sort of thing that shows up in the houses of people who play low brass instruments for too long.
In a Christmas Mood - the Starlight Orchestra. Swing era big band stuff, nicely done and it moves right along.
A Christmas Tribute to Mannheim Steamroller by the Westwind Ensemble. As if we didn't have enough Mannheim Steamroller by Mannheim Steamroller, here's a tribute band.
Christmas Guitars: A Benefit for the National Coalition for the Homeless - various artists. 18 of them. Lots of nice guitar stuff - a little on the quiet and calm side, but for a good cause.
A Waverly Consort Christmas - another one that Lea probably has too. "From East Anglia to Appalachia" is the description. Stuff that we don't have anywhere else, 13th century English motets, some beautiful shape-note hymns. Instrumental variations on Greensleeves. This is a really beautiful album.
Christmas Island by Leon Redbone - mix a bit of 1920's Palm Court Orchestra, with dobro and slack-key guitar, with imitation 1950's Bing Crosby, and throw in a bit of Dr. John for accompaniment. It works surprisingly well. The title song is fun.
A Christmas Celebration by Celtic Women. Nice arrangement, lots of folk-dancey instrumental things, some unexpected medleys. Sally brought this one with her last weekend - more about that below - and we really like it, a nice addition to our collection.

Sally stopped by on her way from New York to her sister's place in VA, on Saturday, and stayed overnight. Around midnight was when we decided that a trio of violin, soprano sax, and euphonium would be just the thing, and we played Christmas carols by ear for about an hour and a half. Good thing John next door is deaf. Different instruments have different favorite keys they tend to default to, and the easy keys on a violin are not the same as the easy keys on a Bb saxophone, which aren't the same as the easy keys on low brass. We were often playing in three different keys for a full verse before we managed to converge on a common key. We had fun, though. We got her on her way Sunday after lunch at Panera - I almost feel like I should do Panera commercials, 'cause I recommend them to so many people on special diets! It was great to have her visit with us; she had never seen chinchillas take a dust bath before! She'll be back for a short stop on her way back to NY next weekend.

Merry Christmas!

squirrel_magnet decided that he didn't want to stand outside holding 20 lbs of brass to his mouth in 35 degree (2 degrees C) weather, so we skipped TubaChristmas yesterday. However, we did play a bit of music at home - he got out the euphonium, and I tried the euphonium mouthpiece plugged into my baritone sax, and managed to make a start on playing a few of the TubaChristmas book second euphonium parts, thus contributing toward my goal of pretending I have an ophicleide come next December and its TubaeChristmases. It certainly sounds as awful as everyone expects an ophicleide to sound, so it should fool everyone!

This evening I made homemade soup and homemade bread for supper - low-fat, low-sodium, and, if I say so myself, yummy. It was a "whatever's handy" soup - a chicken breast cut up, a couple of ounces of leftover macaroni, two potatoes that have been sitting around since Cindy was here in September, some of the bunnies' carrots, and so on and so forth, with a package of turkey meatloaf seasoning mix dumped in for good luck. The bread had just a touch of garlic added to it. It was a good winter supper.

Recent holiday CDs:
A GRP Christmas Collection - a jazzy album, nice stuff, includes Gary Burton, Chick Corea, that kind of stuff.
Yulestride by Butch Thompson - his signature stride piano style; we first became aware of Thompson through his appearances on A Prairie Home Companion.
Make We Joy: Music for Christmas by Holst and Walton - Christ Church Cathedral Choir. Beautiful singing, lovely arrangements, including one of my personal favorites, Holst's "In the Bleak Mid-Winter." Much of this will not be familiar to American listeners and/or those who are not Christmas music geeks - but try it anyway, you'll like it. Almost as much as bright, loud brass, a large, pure-sounding choir sounds like Christmas to me.
Hill Country Hannukah: A Celebration of Jewish Culture in Central Texas (by various and sundry including the Congregation Agudas Achim Adult Choir) - well, you're unlikely to be able to find this one unless you live in Austin; I got it at Waterloo Music over at 6th and Lamar back in 2001 or thereabouts. Nonetheless, I'm mentioning it here, because it's fun. There's some terrific klezmer stuff, a swingy jazz version of Maoz Tzur that is nonetheless respectful, some stuff that's not real familiar. No trace of The Dreidl Song whatsoever. Also, no program notes/liner notes/text inside the CD cover - so the stuff that's unfamiliar remains unfamiliar, unless I work up the energy to Google it.
Merry Texas Christmas, Y'all by Asleep at the Wheel - hey, it's Texas Swing, and it's done right. Guests include Ray Benson, Tish Hinojosa, Willy Nelson, Dan Walser - names familiar to any fan of Texas music. A few original songs, a few standards from contemporary popular secular music, an armadillo in a Santa hat on the back cover. What's not to like?
The Bells of Dublin by The Chieftains - quite a few guests on this one; the surprise is how much I like Elvis Costello on these, even though I'm not an overall Costello fan. It was his performance on these Christmas songs that lead me to Terror and Magnificence which remains one of my favorite albums, although it's not for everyone (and it has nothing to do with Christmas). Jackson Browne doing "The Rebel Jesus" and the Renaissance Singers doing "Past Three O'Clock" which I like. A medley based on "The Wren, the Wren!" which I found particularly fun this year since I just read that The Battle for Christmas book, which gives one a whole new perspective on wassailing and related door-to-door traditions. Other standards and other unfamiliar stuff. This whole album is another one of my very favorites.
Christmas Brass featuring the Dallas Brass - um, it's bright, it's loud, it's brass, Merry Christmas!
Wolcum Yule by Anonymous 4 - early music. I like it. But if you don't like early music, you might find parts of this boring or bland. Mostly less-familiar stuff, several dance pieces, "Grene Growith the Holy" allegedly by Henry VIII. I suspect angevin2 already has this album; if not, Lea, you gotta get it.

And now, back to sitting in an armchair with cats and a book, listening to the wind howl outside.

And there were a great many of them.
Getting onto an army post (I am told it's not a base - the navy and the air force have bases, the army has posts. OK.) involves going through security. Luckily, we know about the North Gate, where the lines are considerably shorter than at the West Gate. One time this weekend, we even had the underside of the car inspected with mirrors.

Anyway, I did not attend all the events, so I can't report on everything. I enjoyed John Stevens' class in how to start in on arranging and composing for the tuba-euphonium ensemble; at this point in my would-be arranging career, everything is helpful, but Dr. Stevens was particularly accessible and handed out excellent notes.

The Army Strings seem to be quite short of strings - at the concert on Friday night, they had hired outside players for the last stand in every string section. The first half of the concert was the combined Armed Forces Tuba-Euphonium Ensemble, which this year included people from the UK Royal Navy and the German Air Force. I really need a field guide to uniforms, because not all the people from "the Marines" wear the same uniform, for example - so who the heck is the red jacket with the gold braid and no black frogs instead of white braid and frogging up the front? Who are the people in suit jackets instead of tunics? The second half of the concert Friday night was the Army Orchestra, which is the Army Strings plus various wind players from other Army ensembles, with the aforementioned ringers to beef up the strings; they had two euphonium soloists for euphonium concerti, and one tuba soloist for a tuba concerto; one of the euphonium soloists was one of the UK Royal Navy guys.

I think my favorite concert of the whole conference was the Tennessee Tech Tuba Ensemble 40th Anniversary Alumni All-Stars. This concert featured nine pieces written for this ensemble, for this 40th anniversary. While some of the pieces were forgettable, several were quite memorable. I'll get the negative out of the way first: I would be very surprised if the Gunther Schuller piece ever gets played again after the ensemble finishes this 40th anniversary tour - if it gets played at all by any other group in the next decade, or any group other than this one, I'd be able to count the number of times on my thumbs and have thumbs left over, I'm sure. It was technically challenging and mathematically interesting, and totally unpleasant to listen to. I mean, 10 separate euphonium parts, 12 separate tuba parts, plus two percussion? Tone clusters. Ugh.
OK, now that I've got that out of the way, let me tell you about the stuff I liked. First, John Cheetham's "Bassa Nòbile" was wonderful, and I am quite sure it will become a favorite and a standard in the tuba literature rapidly as soon as it's published for general use. Watch for it, you music directors on my flist. You'll like it. Eric Ewazen's "Basso Cantante" was also quite nice, and also accessible. My favorite overall was Martin Ellerby's "Epitaph VI: Phoenix Rising (Coventry/Dresden)." It was truly beautiful. Because it is commemorating the bombings in WWII of the English city of Coventry including the Cathedral of St. Michaels (and later the bombing of Dresden and its historical buildings), it includes extensive variations on "The Coventry Carol" and I am afraid that will make the piece popular for misuse as a Christmas piece rather than a solemn memorial piece. It was so pretty, though, with the melody often shared by the lower tuba line and the orchestra bells, an unusual combination that worked with surprising clarity.

The Grand Concert at the end was the Army Band - "Pershing's Own" - with soloists. Nickitas Demos' piece "Air Metal and Roll" featured both a euphonium soloist and a trombone soloist, so there's a good chance it will get re-performed at the Eastern Trombone Workshop in March, for those of you considering whether to attend that. It was a lot of fun. My favorite on this concert was another Ellerby piece, his Tuba concerto, and I think Ellerby is one of my new favorite band composers.

A good time despite mediocre food was had by all. We were talking with our friends Jim & Barbara afterwards at the party, and plotting next year to bring a picnic supper of some sort for Saturday night dinner, so we wouldn't have to eat at the Quarterdeck three nights in a row, and particularly, wouldn't have to leave base and then come through security again, and find a parking space again, for the Grand Concert. That'll depend in part on the weather next January - who knows what the heck the weather might be like then? - but I am already plotting a menu.