Thanksgiving Skeet

Thanksgiving was a day of learning: my mother and brother and I visited relatives down in Murfreesboro, AR, where my father grew up. This is waaaay out there on a farm in the backwoods of Arkansas. I learned how to mix feed for the cattle (2:1 ratio of corn meal to hay), checked out the chicken coop (ca. 9000 hens and 4000 roosters all in one long building is quite a sight), picked black walnuts, fed the cattle in three different fields (neat tip: drive the round bale of hay up on an incline in the back of the pickup, cut the ties, and let it roll down the fill, unfolding as it goes - you end up with a long trough-like line of hay, so you don't have to spread it by hand), moved some more cattle around, as well as a bull or two, and also learned how to make sorghum. My uncle Jerry (Kizzia), who was our farm guru and mentor for the day, makes and sells it - it's an arduous and time-consuming task, and is becoming something of a lost art. Here he is with the pan he uses to cook it:



Here's the label - you should order some - it's more than 80% sugar once he's finished with it. All natural:



You can only get it locally around Murfreesboro, Arkansas, but I bet he'd ship some if you called him up and ordered it.


The highlight of the day, for me, though, was the skeet shooting.

Now, I've never fired a gun before. They don't look kindly on shooting shotguns in New York City. At least, I assume not. So, this was a rare and satisfying experience.

My brother, who's done this once before, nailed his first one:



I missed the first several while I got the feel of my 20-gauge, but eventually nailed one dead on.



After some more hit and miss, I graduated to the 12-gauge, single-shot, using long brass shells. Holy sh*t. I don't have any pictures of that one, but I have the shoulder bruises to prove it. I enjoyed that a LOT.

Here's some dead skeet:



Afterward, I got the nice posed shot, since we were too busy to get many shots while we were actually shooting. Maybe I should make this my new official headshot.



Thank you to Jerry and Aunt Jane for hosting Thanksgiving this year, and to Misty, Paige, Al, Steve, Michelle, Matt, Sara, and Malorie for the wonderful company.

Hope everyone out there had a beautiful and safe holiday.

Ron Bryant, 1942-2005

(I'd been undecided as to whether to do this. I'm a rather private person, and I don't tend to post about my personal life here. This is too fundamentally important to go unmarked.)

"Press on: Nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessul men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." --- Calvin Coolidge, 1872

This was one of my father's most treasured quotes. It has been posted in my parents' 'music room' for as long as I can recall. This was where he taught trumpet lessons for many years. Where he wrote a seemingly endless stream of arrangements for various events. And this is the room where I first wrote music, and had the hand- and mind-numbing experience of doing the full score and parts in pencil for one of my early band works, over the course of 40 hours straight, without sleep, to meet a deadline.

I made it.

My father taught perseverance.

-----

My father was a commanding presence; a great big barrel-chested man, with a deep, resonant voice. A man who, upon first meeting, might be somewhat intimidating, except that he was the embodiment of gentleness, tenderness, and benevolence. He never raised his voice - he never needed to. He earned respect by giving respect. He earned loyalty with loyalty. Love, with love.

He was an active musician throughout his life, playing trumpet and keyboards with a number of bands, in a number of styles, for more than 40 years. He played dixieland with the HappyTymes Jazz Band for more than a decade. He spent eight years as a member of the Arkansas Symphony. He backed Isaac Hayes, Doc Severinson, Boots Randolph, and James Brown. All the while teaching music and band-directing full time. He would often leave a Friday night high school football game after the marching band had, under his direction, finished their half-time show, to go play a gig somewhere, often in the middle of nowhere. And another gig the next night. And often another on Sunday night. And be back at work on Monday morning teaching. One December, he and the Tommy Henderson band, whom he performed with for many years, played 30 gigs in 28 days. This went on for most of the 35 years he was a full time music educator.

Through all this, my mom and dad were happily married 41 years, and were the most amazing parents to me and my brother. I cannot recall a single time when either of them disciplined us, or denied us anything, without giving a clear reason, and I found I could never disagree with them, even if I wanted to. I've never felt wronged by them in any way. Their upbringing ingrained in me a moral clarity far deeper than externally-imposed dogmatic rules or societal mores ever could.

The magnitude of my father's life is only now becoming viscerally apparent to me, as person after person he touched has shared their stories, their experiences, and their admiration and respect for him. He brought music into the lives of thousands of people. Even more importantly, he taught the values of being a dedicated, honest, compassionate person, and taught it by example, not by sermon.

I can only hope to bring as much wisdom, kindness, and inspiration to this world as my father has.

Bowling Green, OH Festival

A week overdue, but at long last (and I know you've all* awaited this moment, barely able to function in the interim), here's the skinny on my trip to the Bowling Green New Music and Art Festival.

* All = the 2 or 3 people patient enough to check this blog even though it changes at a glacial pace

I arrived Friday afternoon, just in time for a run-through of "Loose Id for Orchestra" with the Bowling Green Philharmonia. I didn't have the presence of mind to snap any photos, because the sheer wall of sound coming at me was ... well, LOUD. Holy crap I'd forgotten how loud this piece is. I hadn't heard it in 8 1/2 years, and was nervous whether it would actually work out in the 'real world' - my fears were unfounded - the orchestra and Emily Freeman Brown ripped the head off the beast and fed it to the audience (me) with fearless abandon. Which is what should be marked in the score, now that I think about it.

It was a euphoric rush, and I knew with a little more focus and precision at the concert, it would be an unstoppable force.

A little while later, I attended the Wind Ensemble rehearsal for "Alchemy in Silent Spaces" - this was to be their dress rehearsal (no time the actual day of the concert), so this was my only chance to hear the entire piece, and only once. Fortunately, there was little to adjust - we worked out the climax section of the second movement, which no one ever quite gets, because I've never quite figured out how to notate the tempo fluctuations in that section. After singing it to Bruce Moss, and he sang it back several times, they ran it, and nailed it. I hope to post an example on the site at some point. Anyway, they did a bangup job on the piece - it's a real pleasure to hear the whole piece in its entirety. It works as separate movements, but this 'alchemy,' or 'transformation,' that the title refers to, only happens when the entire work is presented as a whole.

I managed to get a pic of the band rehearsal:


The next evening, I'm rather nervous about the concert - I'm on the program with Sam Adler (who's sitting next to me), but I'm the one closing out BOTH halves of the concert. First off is the Wind Ensemble:


(special thanks to my host, the unstoppable BCM PR machine, Ken Thompson, for the bird's-eye shot)

They did a great job with the piece - the first movement was just a tad too fast, but still worked - once that adrenaline kicks in, it's quite difficult to hold it to 40 bpm. They smoked the climax of the second mvt., and the third erupted with just the right amount of ferocity (by which I mean a LOT). Huge thanks to Bruce Moss and the band for pulling off 20 minutes of my music with so little rehearsal time - I loved hearing you do this piece.

The second half featured the orchestra, and a piece of Sam Adler's I grew to like quite a bit - "The Fixed Desire of the Human Heart" - some gorgeous writing for the strings in the beginning and ending sections - you'd think he'd written the book on orchestration or something (yeah, yeah, bad joke, I know - couldn't resist).

My turn came, and the orchestra nearly caused mortal injuries to the audience. Perfect. Dr. Brown actually got air on the last note of the piece. What more could I ask for?



After the concert, I managed to get shots with Drs. Moss and Brown:



Sunday brought a wonderful surprise addition to the festival: Dr. Brown and the Philharmonia recorded "Loose Id" for their next CD release on Albany Records! I will of course post information about that when it's released sometime next year. They did a good job on a difficult piece, with only a minimal number of takes (it's just not possible to play the piece repeatedly - it's an absolute bear for the brass sections). This will be a great recording - thank you to the orchestra for playing your brains out so late into the evening to do this!


Recording booth inhabitants Andrew Pelletier (who ran the session with overwhelming competence and put me at complete ease) and Titus (I have no idea if I spelled his name correctly, but he was quite cool to hang out with in the overheated booth).

Many, many thanks are in order to the Bowling Green faculty and staff who made the festival possible and who made my stay so pleasant - Dean Kennell, Burton Beerman, Marilyn Shrude, Josh Plocher, Bruce Moss, Emily Freeman Brown, Ken Thompson, and many more, whom I may not have even met, but know you put in many long hours to make the festival happen. I had a great time there, and look forward to my next visit!

But wait - there's more...

After a delightful breakfast on Monday morning, I headed south to Wittenberg College in Springfield to speak with some students there - tried to impart some words of wisdom to the aspiring music educators and composers assembled (and ate some mighty fine brownies in the process - thanks for those!). Afterward, I worked with the string orchestra on my piece, "Rise" which I 'd never heard before - was great to finally hear it. This program is being resurrected by old BCM friend and good buddy, Milt Allen (from Tranzendental Danse of Joi fame) - at the start of semester there were 4 members, and now there's 23, so he's making great progress:



Finally finished the evening (Halloween night, actually), back at the Allen household where Margaret, Madeline, and Ben displayed their massive candy bounty from the evenings trick-or-treating. Mmm....candy....

After that, it was time to make my way home...

Thank you again to everyone I saw and met on this trip - it was an extremely positive week, and this is when there's no better gig on the planet than to be a composer - what could beat traveling to friendly places, meeting great people, hearing your music performed, and then being fed copiously?