We had our last two concerts of the season this past week. There was an interesting twist to the start of our second half that I wasn't ready for...
The piece we played to end the first half was a great arrangement of "When The Saints Go Marching In" (arr. Toshio Mashima) It starts as a dirge like marching to the graveyard (the style claimed to be the start of Dixieland). Then a couple of minutes later the piece gets really upbeat with the familiar melody and features various soloists... clarinet, trombone and trumpet. The arranger picked the euphonium to play the 'dirge' portion - go figure . The piece went pretty well and the crowd seemed to really like it. Our music director, Mark, always goes out to the lobby to meet patrons during intermissions. Evidently there were some questions about my instrument. I had come out in front of the band to play the dirge portion and had it memorized. It was pretty easy and not too long entitled, 'Free as a Bird'. After intermission and beginning of the second half (I had just sat down on stage), Mark calls me up to talk about my instrument. I did the best I could explaining what a euphonium is - trying to keep it simple. Then to demonstrate its tone quality I played a verse of "Mona Lisa" (Ray Evans and made famous by Nat King Cole). (Note: I was standing right under our hand-held recorder so recording wasn't the best). Mark then asked our bassoonist and oboist to come up and explain their instruments. Our double reed players are both H.S. students. Now, this is one reason I'm very proud to be a member of this band. We've been able to grant partial scholarships to students going on to college for over 20 years now. It's not a lot but about $2K or $3K to help them out. This year we had 5 H.S. students playing with us. I think we're just over $700K of awarded scholarships. Cody the bassoonist, will be attending FSU next fall. Karen the oboist, has another year of high school. I think you can tell that both of these students are very talented. They've been students of Dreyfoos High School of Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, FL.
If interested you can listen to this portion here:
Demo of Euph, Bassoon & Oboe:
The piece we played to end the first half was a great arrangement of "When The Saints Go Marching In" (arr. Toshio Mashima) It starts as a dirge like marching to the graveyard (the style claimed to be the start of Dixieland). Then a couple of minutes later the piece gets really upbeat with the familiar melody and features various soloists... clarinet, trombone and trumpet. The arranger picked the euphonium to play the 'dirge' portion - go figure . The piece went pretty well and the crowd seemed to really like it. Our music director, Mark, always goes out to the lobby to meet patrons during intermissions. Evidently there were some questions about my instrument. I had come out in front of the band to play the dirge portion and had it memorized. It was pretty easy and not too long entitled, 'Free as a Bird'. After intermission and beginning of the second half (I had just sat down on stage), Mark calls me up to talk about my instrument. I did the best I could explaining what a euphonium is - trying to keep it simple. Then to demonstrate its tone quality I played a verse of "Mona Lisa" (Ray Evans and made famous by Nat King Cole). (Note: I was standing right under our hand-held recorder so recording wasn't the best). Mark then asked our bassoonist and oboist to come up and explain their instruments. Our double reed players are both H.S. students. Now, this is one reason I'm very proud to be a member of this band. We've been able to grant partial scholarships to students going on to college for over 20 years now. It's not a lot but about $2K or $3K to help them out. This year we had 5 H.S. students playing with us. I think we're just over $700K of awarded scholarships. Cody the bassoonist, will be attending FSU next fall. Karen the oboist, has another year of high school. I think you can tell that both of these students are very talented. They've been students of Dreyfoos High School of Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, FL.
If interested you can listen to this portion here:
Demo of Euph, Bassoon & Oboe:
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