Chicago-The Midwest Clinic (part 2)

One of my favorite things about The Midwest Clinic, beside the great Paige's Music party in the hotel, was my discovery of The Hindsley Transcriptions. While walking through the chaos of the many exhibitors and trying to converse with people while drums are playing, cymbals clashing and trumpeters trying to see who can be most obnoxious, I came across a wonderfully orange booth. Literally, it was all orange...everything, even the lovely gentleman who helped me had a nice bright orange sweatshirt on. None-the-less, what caught my attention was the rack of scores, each cardboard score with an orange cover. Those scores looked just like the wonderful transcription I found of The Nutcracker Suite just a few months ago. I loved that transcription! I quickly glanced over the scores searching for The Nutcracker Suite just to make sure I had the right place, I didn't want to celebrate to quickly and since I couldn't remember the name of the publisher. There it was, all in it's orange glory, standing next to dozens of other orange scores.

For those of you who don't know me, I am not a happy customer when it comes to finding reputable transcriptions of great orchestral works for band. There are many good arrangements of a snipit of this with a snipit of that...but very rarely a great arrangement or transcription that really does the great work justice...until now. I had hit the jack pot! The lovely gentleman in the orange sweatshirt was Bob Hindsley, son of the late Dr. Mark Hindsley and standing behind him were dozens of incredible transcriptions of orchestral works for band. Oh, my heart was content. I found Strauss' Don Juan, Beethoven's Leonore No. 3, Tchaokovsky's Violin Concerto, Bruckner's Violin Concerto, Tchaikovsky's Capriccio Italiano and so much more!

After a bit dreaming about what our library could have and of the repretoire my students could be introduced to, I finally did purchase a few great additions to our library. My librarians will have some work to do when they get back to campus from their Christmas break. I didn't make the purchase just yet, however headed off quickly to find room W 190 to see Michael McIntosh's premiere of his latest piece "Bloom". Spring High School (TX) performed superbly and put on a terrific concert at Midwest performing Michael's new work and other newly commissioned pieces, including a work with percussionist She-e Wu. All together, a fantastic performance-bravo!

Before heading back to Indianapolis and continuing a week of crazy travels, I found a booth that was willing to try to replicate my baton. It is a beautifully balanced and crafted wood baton, not solid wood, but it is seemless from the bulb to the shaft, crafted by Charles Olson. Apparently he sold his business and I was fortunate to find the people who make his designs. I'm excited to see how close they can make it to the original. I love my original but have had it for years and it's starting to look like it.

Next posting I'll have to update you about the new music building...we're so close to being done!

Chicago-The Midwest Clinic

So, day two of The Midwest Clinic out in lovely Chicago, Illinois. Since I've found a quick moment (waiting in The Pavillion at the Hilton for my lunch to arrive) I find myself actually missing writing on my blog. I've, in all honest, never really looked forward to it all all, it was all a Marian University Marketing Communications department indea. I didn't even know what a blog was...tells you how behind the times I must be. Anyways, I wanted to get back in the habit of updating my blog, and not do it every two months.

The Midwest Clinic is a nice event, the wonderful people at Yamaha and Paige's Music have very generous to provide me with registration and a hotel for the conference. The whole trip started out leaving quite early from my home in Fishers to drive up to Chicago Heights, IL to make a visit to Marian Catholic High School. As most of you already know, Greg Bimm (band director) has a phenomenal program with very hard working students. I headed up to Greg's program to do a few auditions. I believe I did 6 or 7, not to bad for a days work. The best part of that trip was the actual audition, each student did a great job, some with INCREDIBLE potential to be very solid professional musicians-but get this-almost all of the students that auditioned for me all want to major in something outside of music, many of them seeking careers in medicine. How awesome is that! Greg, you're the man.

Ok, back to Midwest, after leaving MCHS, now with 2 of my current students who are former MCHS students (they met me for breakfast at Egg and I-great food for an even better price) in my car, we headed to find my hotel at the Hilton on the Magnificent Mile in downtown Chicago. My two students were so great to help me carry my luggage and tons of music to my room. So, after checking into my room I headed out to the McCormick Place (can't remember if it's north or south, but it's the new one) and sat on a nice charter bus for 15 minutes to get there from the hotel. Arrived at the beautiful convention center (although I think Indianapolis could do it soooo much better!) and walked around for about 45 minutes. Lots of vendors trying to speak to potential customers over the constant crescendo of screaming trumpets and cymbal crashes-quite the site...a little irritating after awhile, but then you can just walk to another side of the room. I feel a bit bad for the vendors who have to sit through that for entire days...yikes.

So, headed by to my hotel room to meet with my grandfather, who lives only about 30 minutes from downtown Chicago, for dinner. That was nice-we talked for a long time and I was able to see a deeper and more intimate side of a man I greatly admire. Afterwards I found myself quite exhaused from the day and finally fell asleep with the tv on. No worries, I definitely awoke at 2am to a very warm and stuffy room so I could lower the temperature and turn off the television. Unfortunately, I was now awake. I think I finally fell asleep about an hour later.

I'll write about day 2 a little later, my panini and fries are getting cold.


A presto!

Keeping Busy

Hello again!

Well, I believe it's safe to say that we keep busy in the music department at Marian University. The newly named Steffen Music Center is bustling with students, music and the sounds of construction.

As many of you already know, we are currently in the last stretch of Phase One of the Steffen Music Center expansion and hope to begin soon on the fundraising of Phase Two which will add more practice rooms, offices, studios, classrooms and more. Phase One is 6,500 square feet which includes a large rehearsal hall, practice rooms, uniform and instrument storage room and percussion studio. If all continues to stay on schedule, on January 1, 2010, Phase One will officially be open and ready for use by the many instrumental ensembles and music department events.

The MU Bands has also been keeping busy with the bands with recent performances at home football games, celebrating Band Day 2009 (Band Day 2010 is scheduled for September 11, 2010-mark it down!), drumline performances and run out performances with the Marian University Wind Ensemble to Oldenburg and Mishawaka, Indiana.

The photo to to the right is an arial view of the Marian University Wind Ensemble warming up before their performance for the Sister of Saint Francis in Oldenburg, Indiana.

If you're interested in seeing more picutres of our trips and many performances of the MU Bands, I encourage you to check out our Facebook page under Marian University Bands!

I'll see you next week!

Distinguished Lecturer in Music Series 2009 - 2010 Fall Lineup

Hello again!

It's been too long since I've last written on my blog, but there's just so much to do and so much to tell you about! I hope you'll also look us up on our Facebook page (under Marian University Bands) for construction updates on the wonderful Phase One of the Steffen Music Center. It's sooooo exciting around here! The next blog posting will FINALLY give you a little peak into our new Marian University "Marching Knights" Marching Band uniform!

I am also very excited to officially announce the fall semester of the 2009 – 2010 Distinguished Lecturer in Music Series at Marian University. Each event is free and open to the public.

The Distinguished Lecturer in Music Series (DLMS) is designed to create awareness of the wide array of opportunities in the careers of music and beyond. Our lecturerss come from many backgrounds that have crossed in the pathway of the arts, particularly music. From local educators to CEO’s of large institutions, the DLMS is a great opportunity for students and professionals alike.

Each lecture is approximately 1 hour in length and begins at 7:00pm in the Steffen Music Center, room #2, unless otherwise noted.



Marian University Distinguished Lecturer in Music Series-Fall Semester Lineup


September 10, 2009
Fran Kick, international motivational speaker and former music educator

October 29, 2009
John Wittman, Director of Education and Artists Relations Manager-Yamaha

November 5, 2009
Simon Crookall, Chief Executive Officer-Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra

December 1, 2009
Michael McIntosh, Composer/Percussionist and Marian University faculty member



We hope you will be part of our fantastic series-you’ll love it!

Tremendous Growth in the Arts

This is an incredible time to be involved in education and the arts, and what better location to do this than Indianapolis, Indiana? There has been tremendous growth in the arts not only with organizations such as Music for All, Percussive Arts Society, Drum Corps International, and more relocating to our city, but also on our very own campus. If you have not had the chance to see the Marian University campus in the past month, we strongly encourage you to stop by the music building and see the physical transformation of our music program with construction of phase one of the Steffen Music Center.

We have also added a new member of the Marian University music family. The Department of Performing Arts is pleased to announce, after a very extensive national search, the addition of Dr. Sidney Hearn as assistant director of bands. Hearn comes to Marian University from Auburn University in Alabama with a detailed background in the marching arts with schools of all sizes and abilities, with a strong emphasis in the drum and bugle corps arena. We are very excited to have Hearn join the Marian University bands program.

The 2009-10 academic year brings many exciting events including an invitation from the Mexican Consulate for a performance by the Marian University Wind Ensemble, Band Day 2009, Distinguished Lecturer in Music Series, Conductors' Workshop, Composition Workshop with Kevin Kiner (composer of CSI: Miami and Star Wars: The Clone Wars), and much more.

Indianapolis Invaded by Music-AGAIN!

March 23, 2009

I think that's a great title and wish I could see it on the front page of a major newspaper. It's so true. Indianapolis is quickly becoming this national hub for music. This past week has been quite a whirlwind, I'm not complaining-just stating a wonderful reality. At a time when the global markets are suffering with needs of job cutbacks, Indianapolis continues to host amazing events such as the Music for All National Music Festival, presented by Yamaha.

Yamaha has also been very good to the Marian music program and, in partnership with the Indy Flute Shop, brought the amazing flutist Mimi Stillman to campus for a masterclass this past week. Holy smokes...what a phenomenal musician. To add to the fun and exciting activites at Marian's campus is the continuation of the Distinguished Lecturer in Music Series with the brilliant Zach De Pue, concertmaster of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Check us out on Facebook under Marian University Bands or visit us at www.marian.edu/bands for more upcoming events!

Bis bald!

West Side Story Tips

March 16, 2009

Well, it's been a little while since I made a post on my blog, but I've been a little busy with multiple rehearsals and performances of West Side Story with the Indianapolis Civic Theatre. The extent of my West Side Story knowledge comes from reading about it, seeing the movie and studying the famous vibe excerpt from "Cool". My appreciation for the music has definitely changed now being in rehearsals for about a week and end the first opening weekend of the show.

My colleague, Braham Dembar, played the symphonic suite to West Side Story late last month with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and did a terrific job playing the multiple mallet parts, with such ease walking back and forth to play each intricit mallet part. Bravo Braham!

I only wish that the same experience of playing in the concert hall to playing in the pit was the same. However, it's definitely not. The version that the pit orchestra is playing is a considerable condensed than the orchestral suite, however it is still very demanding. This show only allows for 1 drummer and 1 percussionist. As you can see, there's a lot of stuff going on with the set up. So, I thought I'd offer a few of my thoughts on playing the percussion parts well, since I know that you or someone you know will be encountering this wonderful music at some point in your career.

• Before your first rehearsal, if you can, stop by the pit and see how much space you'll have to work with. This is a very valuable time that you can save now rather than later by coreographing your setup before you even start your first rehearsal.
• Come to your first rehearsal EARLY to work on your setup and come PREPARED. Know your part(s).
• Use a trap table that you can easily access for your tambourine, claves, ratchet, woodblock, castanets, etc. On my table, I have a lighter for the tambourine (in case it were to loose too much tension), woodblock, claves, finger cymbals, slide whistle, castanets, ratchet and guiro with stick. For the most part I keep my whistle around my head at all times and my triangle beater in my pocket. It sounds like much, but it's absolutely necessary for the immediate segues from one scene to the next.
• Position your music stand in the best way possible so that you can see your music, your instruments and your conductor. Those 3 items don't always line up, but find a way to make it work.
• I can go on and on with each different song, but the last major suggestion-KNOW WHERE IT'S AT! Know where your xylo mallets are, know where your hard, medium and soft mallets are at all times. You will RARELY have the luxury to take more than a few seconds to grab the next thing and play.

I hope some of these thoughts help you out one day. There could be an entire book about this, but it's best to just take a lesson with a professional who has played this show before. They will know the in's and out's of how to make it work. That's the key, we work so hard on getting the gig, but we need to focus on how to keep the gig. Make it work. Work hard. Always be prepared.

Why Music? Check this out-very interesting.

March 4, 2009

Below is the welcome address to incoming freshman given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of the music division of the Boston Conservatory of Music. It is very insightful. I hope you enjoy it.



“One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school—she said, “you’re WASTING your SAT scores.” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture—why would anyone bother with music? And yet—from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn’t just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.”

On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan . That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York , went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York , that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang “We Shall Overcome”. Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center , with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we cannot with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heartwrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings—people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I’ll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris ; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg . I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo , ND , about 4 years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier—even in his 70’s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: “During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?”

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year’s freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this:

“If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.”
.

Week in Review

March 3, 2009

Finally, the month of February has come to an end. When I was a work study in college for Instructional Media Services, I recall my boss calling February "the monday's of the year, nothing really happens...". This February wasn't very quiet at all, especially this past week.

This past week geared up for two major concerts, one with the university jazz band, the other for the university wind ensemble along with a clinic with the Saint Joseph's High School band in South Bend, Indiana. The jazz band has been working very hard in preparation for their first performance of the year at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's Centennial Era Gala on Friday, February 27, 2009. This event kicks off a three year celebration of centennial of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indianapolis 500 race. We were very fortunate to be invited back to perform for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and perform for their Centennial Era Gala. The event included many notable celebrities and drivers and included The Gordon Pipers, the Marian College "Orchestra" and "Mr. Las Vegas" himself, Wayne Newton. I wish I had pictuers to share, but was quite an event, filled with great entertainment and company and I am very honored to have been part of this historic event of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Following that incredible evening was a performance of the university wind ensemble at the Indianapolis Artsgarden in downtown Indianapolis, entitled "Big Music Downtown".

The program:

• Festive Overture-Dmitri Shostakovich
• Irish Tune from County Derry-Percy Grainger
• Overture to The Impresario-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• The Klaxon-Henry Fillmore
• Pictures at an Exhibition-Modest Mussorgsky

I also had the pleasure to chat with John Strauss, host of WIBC's (93.1 FM) First Day, about the concert and the great opportunities in the arts in Indianapolis before the performance this past Sunday. If you get the chance, check him out on www.wibc.com/weekend/firstday.

Play percussion? Good cord mallets in your bag.

February 17, 2009

Earlier today I had a music ed. student come into my office and ask for another copy of the Percussion Ensemble course syllabus since he had lost his and was wanting to finally purchase the items he needed for that course i.e. stick bag, timp. mallets, concert snare sticks, etc. Well, part of that list of needed items are two pairs of marimba mallets. He also asked if he needed vibe mallets, a very valid question since he is taking a course that revolves around playing various percussion instrument. He learned a very valuable lesson today-invest in some good cord mallets!

With cord, you'll have greater durability than yarn and you can have a great range of uses as opposed to just vibraphone or just marimba. With cord, you can easily segue from vibes to marimba to a nice suspended cymbal roll.

Pros:

• durability
• different choice of sounds
• versatility-marimba, vibes, cymbals, blocks, etc.
  

Cons:

• vibe mallets are shorter and a slight disadvantage for larger intervals on the marimba
• doesn't allow you the fullest of range from the needed lushness of the lower register to a full articulate sound on the upper register

I'm sure there are more pros and cons to using vibe mallets, but I must admit that I am a huge fan of the Mike Balter Pro Vibe Series, especially his medium blue and soft red mallets. While in college I started a farily large collection of mallets for my bags and I would find myself constantly returning to a select few models for general work-Balter blues, Balter reds, Leigh Stevens line and now...the Gifford Howarth line through Vic Firth.

When I started learning the Bach Cello Suites on marimba, I went through every possible combination of mallets to make sure I had an even sound across the instrument, but I found myself coming back to the Balter reds of the Pro Vibe Series. I love the warmth, yet articulation of the reds during the lower third of the instrument.

As I mentioned a little earlier, the Malletech Leigh Stevens and Vic Firth Gifford Howarth Series are amongst my favorites to use, particularly in a solo setting.

The Recording-When To Use It

February 11, 2009

I've been talking about this topic with my wife recently and the pros and cons of a recording in terms of preparing music for performance. Of course, there are millions of recordings of just about anything and they all serve various purposes, the most common of course is for listening pleasure.

So, when to use it? Recordings are an ideal source of listening pleasure but then can also be used as a learning tool. How it should be used as a learning tool should be carefully thought out. I am a firm believer that a recording should be used for stylistic examples and interpretations in preparing for performance.

I find, in the college setting, that a good portion of my students are still learning and exploring much of the repertoire that we perform. We are gearing up for our next performance (March 1 at the Indianapolis Artsgarden!--shameless plug) entitled "Big Music Downtown" and are performing Mussorgsky's famous Pictures at an Exhibition arranged by John Boyd from Indiana State. Since this is my first time conducting the complete work I have been studying this piece for a while now and became a little worried when I encountered No. 6 Two Jews, One Rich, The Other Poor. I knew that there would be a few raised eyebrows when they saw the amount of 32nd notes, especially with a pick up of a 64th note.

Let's use recordings in the classroom for examples of other interpretations and styles and not as a tool to help them "learn the music". Sure, it's fine to play a recording of the piece once at the beginning, but don't constantly reference it to demonstrate how they should be.

Let's do our best to cultivate the process of discovery in music and not be so quick to give them the answers. Maybe that concert won't be as stellar as you hoped, but I bet they really learned something and I know that your next performance will be that much better.

Quality of the learning environment

January 26, 2009

As we approach the middle of winter, my students (and many faculty) are getting antsy about the beginning of Phase 1 of the Marian College Music Center's expansion. The expansion of the music center will allow us to accommodate the quickly growing music population due to the new bands program and growing choral program. This new facility, phase 1 of 3, includes:

• multiple Wenger practice rooms
• large rehearsal hall with 20 feet tall ceilings
• large instrument storage room
• instrument repair station
• percussion storage room
• marching band uniform storage
• administrative assistant office space

Schmidt Associates (architectural firm) designed a building that pays homage to the beauty and class of the historic Stokely and Allison mansions, staples in the design of Marian College's beautiful and vibrant campus. To honor our heritage as a Catholic university and look to the future, the facade resembles the recently built University Hall dormitory and has a wall of the first ten notes of the university fight song, "We rise and cheer for you dear Marian", marked in neumatic notation, a notation style that is most commonly associated with gregorian chants and Catholic liturgical music.

Buildings are amenities that serve the greater good of a campus and it's community. Improving instructional quality and academic performance is greatly enhanced with a quality learning envorinment. Having a "quality learning environment" does not mean to suggest having a new facility or more instruments, rather that the most important part of the building is you-the educator, the eager student or the supportive parent. It is very important to relate them to our bigger purpose-human development. Without students being able to take advantage of another great learning tool, these projects are not relevant.

Having a new facility or renovation does not guarantee success but rather allows you access to another tool to offer your students, parents, administration, etc. Keeping this in perspective is an essential element to your sustained successes. Without the support of your students, alumni, faculty, staff, boosters, administration and community...a structure is simply an open space, but with their support it becomes an envorinment destined for great things.

Practicing...Writing

January 24, 2009

At the start of this new semester, I have made a new addition to my syllabi for those taking my MUS 105 Percussion Ensemble course and MUS 123B Percussion Private Lesson course. I have added the most beloved part of any course-writing papers.

In continued efforts to ensure that our graduates have as many tools as possible to be successful in their fields, I believe that having the ability to write well is absolutely essential. We live in a society where it is becoming increasingly more common to communicate with quick emails and text messages rather than a well written letter. I know that my students take their required writing courses, but I think that music educators can partake in that role of encouraging and underlining the importance of being able to communicate well with words. Encourage students to write. Just as we take time to underscore the necessity of practicing an instrument, let's take some time to have our students write a little. Perhaps a one page paper about their previous lesson, or even better yet, have them submit it in an email so they can have reinforcement that email can still be used as a proper form of communication.

As I started glancing through some of the papers I have to grade (over Dame Evelyn Glennie's documentary Touch the Sound) I noticed, not only are my students taking the time to write a good paper, but that I learn more of my students. Encouraging our students to write may not only be a necessary skill for them, but it may make us better teachers, allowing us to encounter more ways to be fully engaging in their education.

Keeping them interested

January 23, 2009

The other day I was visiting a school in Evansville, Indiana, telling the students and their director about the great programs and opportunities at Marian College. While I was down there, I met with a former teacher of mine, Alfred Savia, Music Director of the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra. Alfred and I had met for breakfast to chat over some curriculum ideas for the first annual Marian College/Carolina Crown Drum and Bugle Corps conducting workshop entitled The Art of Conducting (June 12-14, 2009 at Marian College) in which the premise of the workshop is to support William Revellie's famous belief "From the 50 yard line to the concert hall, there is no difference". This workshop not only focuses on conducting styles and techniques for the concert hall or the field, but also stresses the importance of leadership necessary to be successful on the podium. Thinking about the leadership skills needed to be a conductor of many sorts, either with music, the classroom, or on the job site you have to always keep thinking about how to keep your musicians, students, or employees interested in what they do.

How to keep them interested? Here are a few of my suggestions.

• WANTING TO BE THERE-One of the biggest beliefs I have as an educator and conductor is wanting my students/musicians to want be there. If they don't have a reason to want to be there for themselves, then you will never get them to fully experience the potential they have. Put yourself in their shoes. Why would you want to be in your class or meeting?
  

• SENSE OF SUCCESS-If your employees believe that they are being successful, even in the most moderate terms, they will continue to want to work harder to acheive greater successes.

• SAY WHAT YOU MEAN AND MEAN WHAT YOU SAY-If you start out saying "this will be hard" you have already admitted defeat. Choose your words carefully and say what you mean and genuinely mean it.

• BE SINCERE-People can see right through you if you are insincere. If you're not convinced in what you're doing, what makes you think that your audience will be?
  

Do you remember the old saying "if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself"? Set the tone, be the example. Be the example that your students or colleagues can look up to.

These are just some of my thoughts of how to keep your audiences fully engaged, they are not strict rules, but guidelines. Be open to different methods of success, you never know-you might stumble upon an idea even greater.

What are you listening to?

January 5, 2009

I've been sitting in my office working on all kinds of things today, including a visit to a local high school to talk about the opportunities for the students in music at Marian. Unlike most people, I can't have music on while I work. Unfortunately, I put it on anyways although I know all to well that I'll end up focusing on the music and not the work. So, I tried something a little different and typed in a few keywords on YouTube to see what would come up. I stumbled upon this video of Bobby McFerrin and Richard Bona doing a live improv in Montreal and I absolutely had to share it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iimMKWF7SK0&NR=1
If that link doesn't take you there, look up Bobby McFerrin and Richard Bona, you'll find it.

This brought me back to something that I have been thinking about for the past few days. The curious question of "what's on your ipod?" Considering I don't really use my ipod anymore, but tons of cd's around my home office and my office at the university and throughout my car, I've been thinking about music I have been listening to lately. I've been trying some music that I am not all that familiar with. I've been listening to a lot Tchaikovsky lately, most recently his Manfred Symphony. All you trumpet players out there, take a look at those tonguings! It's some awesome stuff out there. And it's such a wonderful reminder of how old music like that is and how fresh it stays. Not too long ago I was watching a Bernstein rehearsal of his famous West Side Story where he was talking about his own music and that he had finally really studied it in the mid-1980's. He never conducted it, except for the overture on a few occasions, but never truly studied his own work like he would study a Haydn score. He mentioned how it was nice to hear his music stay fresh after so many years and but nothing in comparison to how Mozart's music stays fresh. Isn't that amazing and so true?! Although Mozart died over two centuries ago his music still stays fresh.

The point of all this was to make you ask yourself "what are you listening to?" There's nothing wrong listening to the Britney Spears come back album or playing your Thriller album again and again, but ask yourself why you're not exploring other music out there? I know, as humans-especially in a Western dominated society, we tend to latch onto our few things that we enjoy and become numb to everything. I ask you to be adventurous and at least try out something new. You don't have to jump right into looking at the incredible world of "classical" music, but perhaps take out 50 cent and listen to some Run DMC, then listen to the pipes of Steven Tyler and Aerosmith, then perhaps you'll listen to some Dave Matthews and then hook up into some Phish, then maybe the Grateful Dead...the road is endless. At some point you might even listen to Metallica and then come across the work the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra did with Metallica and accidentally listen to Carmina Burana and be blown away with a whole complete idea of "power chords".

Where do you want to go today with music? It'll take you all over the place. It's an incredible ride, so hang on. Or, for some of you who might be more like me, just take a chance...who knows, you might just find yourself needing some bigger space on your ipod. Try something else...you might just find yourself loving something you never knew existed.