Northeast Jr High Music Festival

On March 13, 2015, I got to rehearse and conduct one of the Jr High Music Festival bands.  It was a great day.  Really good bunch of kids.  The flute and clarinet sections were fantastic and the trumpet and alto saxes were really good, too.  One really good trombone, and Mike O played euphonium parts.  The tenors wouldn't play the same things twice, and the bass clarinets, bari saxes, and even electric bass could barely be heard.  I honestly couldn't tell if they were playing most of the time.  The drummers had various issues, including playing the melody instead of their written part.  I'm not being negative - it really was a good day, but I had to prioritize the issues.  I was expecting to focus on dynamics and articulations, but instead tried to get the low and tenor instruments to be heard at all.  I worked on the countermelody in the trombone2 and tenor sax part way too long, because I never heard it again after I thought we made some progress.

The concert went well, really:

Themes from "Jupiter" - We started off with a huge chord that sounded great.  Triangle came in, saxes played their melody, we nailed the syncopation but then we couldn't hear the trumpets or horn parts.  Something happened when the woodwinds started in on their 8th notes and the percussion didn't come in, but we all sort of stopped together.  The andante went well, and although the percussion came in on the wrong beat they fixed it at the next section.  I think the ending went okay.

Saxophonic Boogie - This was fun.  I don't remember any problems, and the dynamics and repeats seemed to be followed.

Cruisin' in Five - FIVE MINUTES to get the triangle on her hand!  We all waited in painful awkwardness as she tried to get it right.  If she'd just done as I'd suggested it would have been fine!  But she played the part fine.  Woodwinds were awesome, although the clarinets had a hard time with a rhythms that we'd worked on, and that imitated what the flutes did for three measures before they played it.  And we worked on it several times that day.  I'd thrown a little solo at the conga player that wasn't written, and he nailed it.  Dynamics were nonexistent.  Low instruments may well have been absent also.  But we were together.

Colonel Bogey - I'm so glad that Jane played along!  The drummer played the melody instead of their part, and I don't understand why!  We worked on it!  Whistling part of the melody was really cool, and the kids had fun with it.  Never heard the countermelody from anyone other than Mike O.  That was very frustrating.  Barely heard the low instruments.

In discussing the concert with parent/teacher, she said she could hear the low instruments.  I guess it might have been that they were just way quieter than I'm used to.