First of all, the 4th of July was a lot of fun. Playing principal horn with the Wenatchee Valley Symphony for their fireworks show at Walla Walla Point Part was absolutely amazing. I felt like I played pretty well, and saw some old friends there. My family and I had a fun couple days away from home for a while, so I was like a little vacation.
Once that ended, very diligent and lengthy work went into the preparation for my camp. I had a due date of applications be on June 22nd, but I have a number of late entries, so I had wait on my preparations. I spent the next couple fo weeks making several arrangements, as well as a lot of other programming. I also did a ton of printing and organizing, and ordering music and supplies. It seemed to take a lot more time than the last two years to prepare.
I think it was mainly because I got an earlier start this year on preparations over the last couple years. I remember in the past I was making arrangements and printing down to the wire. Thus, I many of my arrangement plans had been put aside or reduced, making them shorter or simpler. But this year, with more time to arrange music, I made my arrangements longer and more complex. And they took a while. I also had a challenging choosing a program for each of the groups.
But, in the end, each group has an interesting program. I am in the midst of the brass camp now, finishing with Day 3 today. It's been going really great. I have 20 students enrolled this time, which is the highest ever. The kids are loving the music, both for the quality of it and also the challenge. They all seem to be having a great attitude, and are trying the best. The majority of the students this year are high schoolers, which is great because of the quality of the playing. But it's the younger players stepping up that have been impressive. Bear in mind that none of this involves perfect playing, but rather the perfect work ethic, heart, and drive to do better and have fun doing so. I think the keyword is "heart". There is a lot of heart in the playing of these students. I'm proud of them already, and they haven't even performed yet! That starts tomorrow. Don't worry, I'm recoding them. I'm really looking forward to showing them off!
It's cool that the majority of the students at the camp are my private students. I love building a relationship with my students, and hanging around them all day allows me to not only build our professional relationship but also just talk and goof around with them. There have been a lot of laughs at the camp...it's been really great.
I've also got some really great coach help this year from other adults. A couple of my former horn students have been a huge help, as well as a local tuba professional, one of the band teachers here, and my own mother. I don't know how I'd do this without them.
So we've got 2 days left of the camp, which entails performances. I really looking forward to their performances...I can't wait to show them on here!
Take care and value music.