The Concert Last Friday and Other Stories

First of all, an explanation as to why I’m up at midnight writing this….I had a cup of tea this afternoon, a 20 oz cappuccino at about 5:15 pm, and an energy drink at about 6 o’clock…and then was irresistibly drawn into a 30-minute slumber at 6:30. For the record, that much caffeine in my system is highly abnormal. But the weird thing is that caffeine seems to put me to sleep. Until I wake back up. And now I’m wired and can’t go to sleep….I have a strange metabolism….

Anyway, the concert last Friday. Several brass and percussion musicians from the Heartland of America Band of the Air Force performed a free concert at a local high school, and we went to see them with another homeschooling family. I have seen the Heartland of America Band once before, and they are a remarkable set of musicians (the sort that has the paradoxical effect of both inspiring me and driving me to despair in my own playing…). This particular group had four trumpeters, two percussionists, three trombonists, a tuba, and a euphonium, if memory serves. They played a wide range of pieces:

Bizet’s “Habanera” from Carmen. The vocalist was quite good, and the effect of having all brass instruments in the background was interesting. I have always liked this tune; unfortunately, it was spoiled for me by the fact that the only really funny Super Bowl commercial this year used this exact same piece, so I couldn’t get the Doritos ad out of my head. Oh, yes, and then the Gilligan’s Island episode where they set Shakespeare to music and sang the “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy to this tune. Yes, it is more or less ruined for me….

A few scenes from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet (“The Street Awakens,” “Montagues and Capulets,” and “Friar Laurence,” I believe). Very well done, and I quite liked the “Montagues and Capulets.” The martial rhythm of that scene was well suited to a brass ensemble.

In the spirit of the season, they played a few love songs, mostly jazz, but also “El Belle Noche,” from Lady and the Tramp. I had not heard that song for quite a while; it was quite good, and two of the trumpeters added some special effects by placing their bells into a bowl of water. The bubbling sound produced was quite the crowd-pleaser!

They had two soloists. One of their trumpet players played the cornet piece “Song and Dance” by Philip Sparkes. He struggled with a few of the high notes near the end, but it was still quite impressive overall, and it was a most enjoyable piece to which to listen. The other soloist played a section from Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Tuba Concerto in F minor. Had they not said he was English, I would have guessed that Williams was American by the sound of the piece; it had the rhythmic quality and heavy use of pentatonic scales that is typical of American music and evoked images of the western deserts in my mind. In any case, it was a beautiful piece of music.

The band played a few more songs, including a Sousa march and a choral piece by Bach, and then closed out with an Armed Forces salute. We stood for the Army (my brother) and Air Force (my dad), and by the time it ended, everyone in the auditorium was standing just to show their support, whether or not they’d served. They also played an encore of “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” which brought back a lot of memories and inspired me to look through our music books to find our patriotic sheet music.

It was quite an impressive concert, and afterwards, the 6 of my family who were there and 8 of the other family descended en masse upon Dairy Queen, destroying whatever hopes they may have had of locking up at a decent hour. There we had quite a good time as well, discussing over our Blizzards such things as cars, guitars, video games, PC v. consoles, Donald Duck impressions, school, making prank phone calls, and how women are so unfathomably strange....

In other news, the US History post that I shared was intended to state my withdrawal from further political discussion, but, alas, was but the beginning of a thread that ended up with 64 posts. Apparently, some people thought I was perfectly serious about the "divine right of kings" statement (and I was only half-joking, but the intention was tongue-in-cheek), and then that discussion led to discussions of the place of Scriptural morality in politics (i.e., should Scriptural law be applied in a republic), and it went downhill from there. Still learning when to keep my mouth shut....

Also, I posted a new old poem on my fiction/poetry blog, an essay comparing presuppositional and classical apologetics on my theology/philosophy blog, and a Western Literature essay on Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot on my Lit Crit blog. I really want to post some original essays, but I have about half a million ideas running through my head, from literary sketches to thoughts on a Christian epistemology to the theological allegory of Moby Dick, and haven't sat down to write one of them....I need to. And I shall. Eventually.

Finally, I made a little web page with all of the recordings I've made so far that I'm willing to share. I went on a recording spree last weekend and recorded 5 or 6 songs, including one with my glass slide: "I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole," which was a Depression-era blues/gospel song by Blind Willie Johnson. It was rather a different musical and vocal direction for me, but very fun. Unfortunately, I dropped my slide today and it shattered, so I'm back to the knife blade for now...Anyway, enjoy, critique, and comment. If you like any of them, feel free to download!

Sola Gratia,
Colin

P.S. It is now 1 in the morning, and I am finally sleepy...ugh...