Harding Academy represent!
I spent Friday evening with the Harding Academy band and their new director this year, Colby Canterbury, working on Dusk. I have to say when I first walked in and saw that about 40% of the band consisted of saxophones, I was slightly worried. Somehow, though, they actually made a solid, warm, non-saxophone-dominated sound as an ensemble – I was really quite impressed with the group!
Aside from me screwing up the conducting in several spots (I didn’t have a score to the piece beforehand – I never have scores to my own pieces for some reason), it went well, and hopefully the band got a sense of what’s important in the piece, and how important the overal arc of the music is. I think they were exhausted after we ran through it…I’m relentlessly slow in my tempo, and the poor flute players at the end have to achieve super-human breath control and endurance… 🙂
We had a good time, and I got them all to pose with me for a pic after rehearsal, even though they were all ravenously hungry for the barbecue that was waiting for them in the next room…
Thank you all for spending a Friday night with me. I had a great time! Special shout-outs (shouts-out?!?) to my new MySpace friends from Harding: Ashley for being the first to find me on MySpace, Brandon on Euphonium (especially since you basically had never played it before), and Jessica for the lovely clarinet solo at the beginning! And of course a big ‘thank-you’ to Colby for inviting me and for programming my music.
Best of luck on your concert next Saturday – sorry I won’t be able to make it – I’ll be in Amherst, Massachusetts!
More about that coming soon…