davewerden

Here is our newest featured recording, this time from The United States Marine Band. John Philip Sousa is known as "The March King" in the USA, but he also composed other types of music. Here is the Marine Band performing Sousa's Overture to the American Maid. This is from a live performance from November 15, 2004, as part of the Marine Band National Concert Tour.

How many times have you observed someone who is not very considerate about the cell phone? Sometimes you will hear ringers going off in church, at the movies, or even in a concert. Now and then the person will answer and talk on the phone during times that should be reserved for other things. I think most of us are bothered by this but do not do anything about it.


Suppose you are in a musical group in the middle of a performance when someone starts talking on their phone. Suppose ...

I LOVE movie music! Writing for the movies is a sophisticated art form these days. In the earliest days of movies, before they had sound, it was up to the theater's pianist to come up with appropriate background music to fit the action on the screen. As "talkies" became a reality, composers were hired to come up with the recorded soundtracks. At first there was substantial content from existing classical music. When I was growing up the TV Western series "The Lone Ranger" was how many people came ...

There have been several studies that come to the same conclusion: when children take music lessons, their minds improve in several ways compared to children who do not study music. Memory is enhanced and math abilities are especially improved.


The studies agree that these improvements take place after only a few months of study. The longer the student studies music, the greater is the effect.


From my own experience I have inferred that this is true. As regular ...

I just learned that this year's ITEC has canceled its jazz competition because of a lack of qualified applicants. I'm not quite sure why that is, especially for euphonium players. Of course, not all of us have the instinct to do a proper job of playing jazz, but there have to be a large number of folks who could do this but have not chosen to.


For euphoniumists, there is a long-standing lament about the lack of paying gigs in the USA (aside from our service bands). Certainly there ...