Audio/Video Files
After a
depressing first two years I finally got a chance to use the skill that I
thought I'd been hired for (classical trombone - not being forced to bite off and tongue stop the end of every stinkin' note - even in wind ensemble - even playing holst!). I got to play blue bells of scotland with the band
in two concerts in April 2006. This was the first time I ever played a solo with
a group.
Blue Bells of Scotland, Ryan Hudson, conducting
There's plenty of chipped notes, but given my problem with nerves and the
amount that I felt I regressed since enlisting, I was pretty happy.
In late February and early March, 2007, I had the cool opportunity to perform my arrangement of
Czardas with the band. For anyone who doesn't know me from college, Czardas has
a special meaning for me; I had been working at Daval's ice cream summer 2003
(with a rather mean and unpleasant boss). I had just bought Christian Lindberg's
CD - The Virtuoso Trombone. I listened to that CD over and over. There were two
pieces on that CD that became really familiar to me: the Hindemith Trombone
Sonata - which I ended up playing on my recital the next semester, and Czardas,
which I transcribed. When I finally quit Daval's, I kinda vowed to myself that I
would never get stuck doing a job outside the field of music. And I was
determined to practice like mad to obtain that goal. So, I started ripping
Czardas apart, piece by piece. The solo itself had my two largest obstacles in
Trombone playing - high range and endurance. I worked on it like mad for the
rest of summer 2003, but never quite got performance ready. Here's a
video of Czardas from the concert we played on march 1st, 2007. This was the
last performance I did. It wasn't the best face day. Sadly, there's a lot of
blips. But there's still some good moments too.
Outdoor concert on base, Feb 23.
Here's a video of a rehearsal on 2007-02-13, preparing for the Concert
One cool thing that our Dixieland band did was an appearance on the hawaii morning show (channel 5) leading up to our july 4th concert. It happened on Thursday th29 of June. There were 6 times during the 2 hour long show when they would cut to us for about 45 seconds before going to commercial.
I'll have to post that video sometime...