MMEA Performance

This blog entry is over four months late!

One of the highlights of this year at school was a performance in February at the Minnesota Music Educators Association Midwinter Clinic by the Symphonic Band. Last year's Symphonic Band recorded two pieces (Caprice by William Himes and The Fire of Eternal Glory, James Curnow's arrangement of Shostakovich) and I found out about the band's acceptance in the middle of the summer. Right away, I started planning the program...but when the year started, I found that a number of students, including all of the 9th graders I had expected, would not be in the ensemble I was left with an ensemble of 36 instead of the mid-40s, and several sections were short players. Add to this that all three double reeds were new to their instruments this year, and I knew the ensemble had a ways to go to be ready.

From the start of the year, I tried to impress upon the group the need to make every note count. We had to play everything with meaning and precision, and we couldn't do this without truly listening. A performance early on in the year (on Halloween) for the other 7th and 8th graders helped put the group in a concert mindset, and our first evening concert in November got some of the works for MMEA ready. As I thought about the program more, I knew we needed to do some special things to make the program meaningful.

First, I had planned all along to write a new piece for the band. This had to wait until December and my winter break...more on that later. Second, I asked saxophonist Greg Keel if he would be willing to appear as a soloist with the group, and he agreed. I had one piece in mind for him as an improvisor and set to work trying to find another. The first, Lissa Fleming May's Reflexão e Dança is a Latin inspired tune that calls for the ensemble to create its own arrangement of the improvised section. Later, I found Basin Street Barbecue, a version of a big band chart for concert band. Greg sounded fantastic on both, and the students really enjoyed having him at the school to work with them on improvisation and having him play with us--as several students put it, he made them feel professional.

Because I waited until December to write a new piece for the band and because I didn't want to overload the program with difficulty, I kept the new work on the easy side. It's called St. Croix Valley Overture. Its not quite ready to post yet, but I hope to get to it within the next week. I was making edits up until the week before the performance and didn't finish all the tweaks I'd like to make it look nice.

Take a look at the final program. While not the most challenging program for a middle school band, it represented a significant accomplishment for the group and the school. For a band of 36 non-auditioned students in 7th and 8th grade to go to the state music convention and make the program sound good is impressive, and I was proud of the students.

Preparing for the MMEA performance pushed the ensemble farther than it has ever gone in technique and musicianship, and it remained one of the most memorable events for all the students through to the end of the year. Perhaps later I'll reflect on how the preparation impacted our rehearsals for the rest of the year.

music listening contest 2015

It's a pleasure to find activities that are well-run, worthwhile, and enjoyable. The Minnesota High School Music Listening Contest is one such activity, and I want others to know how neat it is.

How does it work? Teams of three students receive a well-written study guide, three CDs of music, and a subscription to the Naxos Classical Music Library. The teams have about two and a half months to prepare by learning the pieces from the list and all kinds of facts about their composers, why they were written, and other details. Half of the music is a broad overview of music history from our earliest records to the music of the present day, and the other half focuses on one area in each of three categories. In 2015, the featured composer was Handel, the featured ethnomusic was Hawai'i, and the featured genre was guitar music.

At the regional and state contests, their are five rounds of testing. The first is a "drop the needle" style round with excerpts of music from the listening list. The second requires students to respond to short answer or multiple choice questions, also based on listening prompts from the list. The third round, the "Lightning" round, is a set of 20 very brief excerpts that students must identify. It helps that this round is set up like a matching quiz, but some excerpts are used more than once and others not at all! The fourth round is a multiple choice test with no audio prompts. The "Mystery" round is last, and students must identify music by composer and time period. The catch is that the excerpts are not from their listening list!

Last year (2014) was the first year I prepared students for the MLC. I worked with two teams, meeting once a week to listen to the music and discuss what they were learning. While we did not score well at the regional contest, everyone had a blast and wanted to return to try again in 2015. Three more students joined the original six, and one of our three teams this year made it to the state competition on February 6. It was an exciting afternoon, particularly as we watched the top two teams battle it out in a College Bowl-style competition after the regular rounds were over.

If you want to learn more about the MLC, check out their web site!

composition project update (chorales)

See earlier posts on the composition project here.

After finishing my own harmonization of a Bach melody, I was pleased to see two other very different takes on the harmonization from Douglas A. Bradley and Michael Blostein. We each had own goals in mind. I'll share those briefly with scores and recordings for each.

Me

My goal was to keep the rhythmic activity to a minimum and focus on interesting harmony. I wanted to reinforce our work on the chromatic scale in the 7th and 8th grade band. I was afraid of overwhelming the band and listener with too much surprise, so I kept the dissonance to a minimum and used mainly major and minor triads. You can see a score and listen to the recording below. Email me if you'd like parts.

Douglas A. Bradley

I really like the way Doug Bradley broke up the melody so that the bass instruments get to play it for the last two phrases--it totally changes the flavor of the harmonization, which was already interesting (quartal!) to begin with. One of the posters on my band room wall says "Bring out the dissonances, or they will sound like wrong notes," and working a bit on this version of the chorale was a great reinforcement for that concept. When students shy away from playing any note, it tends to sound wrong. Playing more confidently helps fix many tuning issues. Score.

Michael Blostein

It was nice to see Michael's creativity in stretching phrases and including a few touches of percussion outside of mallets. My band did not do justice to the phrasing or dynamic markings, but working on these things was helpful. My favorite part is the series of dissonances leading into the second to last cadence. Check out the score.