That's right, there are many updates to share. I realize it has been over two months since my last entry, so I'll cover what I can in the last two months, starting with the most recent.
Today I had the distinct pleasure of playing Mendelssohn's 3rd Symphony with the Festival City Symphony here in Milwaukee. What a fabulous piece of music this is! If you don't know it, it is worth including in your mental library. I got to play assistant principal on it, but still got to play quite often, and had a really great time. They've got a fabulous horn section there. It's a semi-professional groups that have around 7or 8 concerts a year...I can't remember exactly how many. I've played with them many times before, and have always have enjoyed my time with them. On Friday I performed my Graduate Horn Recital, which went pretty well, for the most part. I played Eugene Bozza's En Foret, Beethoven's Horn Sonata (on Natural Horn) and Ewazen's Ballade, Pastorale & Dance quite successfully. However, my attempt at the Prelude and Gigue from Bach's 4th Cello Suite was less than ideal. With already a lack of daily practice to an overly busy schedule, I wasn't technically up to playing the entire two movements nonstop. Those suites should never be performed by horn players! At least not ones at my level or lower. They're great fun to play as etudes and exercises. But anyway, at the performance I plowed through them, with about an 85% accuracy rate, so I survived, and learned a lesson. There were more concerts I played in the last couple months, one of which being the wonderful Dvorak Serenade for Winds with the Wisconsin Wind Orchestra, as well as a couple band concerts. But now, I have some performances to really look forward to. On March 28th the UWM will be performing Schumann's 3rd Symphony. What a gem of a piece, particularly for the horn section! This piece proved to be quite challenging, but as of late (since it is now under our grasp) has become quite rewarding for the horn section. We are sounding good. We're just having such a great time with it that we're less tense about it, I guess. So that's something to look forward to. Once that concert's done, the UWM Orchestra's last concert of the season is quite large. We're playing the suite of 4 dances from Estancia by Alberto Ginastera, which I've played before, and remember it to be quite nightmarish to play. Should be interesting. However, we also play on this concert Tchaikovsky's Romeo & Juliet, a piece I've known the score of for a long time and I just really love. We also feature a couple soloists on the program, one of which being my good friend Joe Dvorak on Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto, a piece not too well-known by my colleagues, or even my teacher. But I'm telling you, this piece is absolutely incredible! The orchestration is what amazes me the most: The clarinet soloist, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, a snare drum and strings. It has this cool dark quality to it, yet it's all beauty. Aside from performing, I also get to look forward to one of my out pieces getting performed. Evergreen Fanfare will be performed by UWM's Youth Wind Ensemble program, known as UWAY, later this school
1 Comment
T Bolyard
3/16/2014 11:30:40 pm
Congratulations on a wonderful performance!
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