The past few nights have been particularly special. On Thursday, the Smith Junior High School Wind Ensemble, under the direction of my own former junior high school band director, Dawn Parker, premiered a rather complicated piece called Lightworks. The piece is about five minutes long and full of independent and highly rhythmic parts — very different from many other [typical] junior high school pieces. Although Dawn recruited a few Smith alumni to fill in some instrumentation gaps from their parent high school, Skyline High School, the Smith kids owned this piece! Did I mention there are constantly changing time signatures that battle back and forth between 4/4, 3/4, and many a 5/8? I don’t remember even being introduced to 5/8 meter until I was in at least 10th grade, and these kids treat it like chocolate cake. They are going to be very much “ahead-of-the-game” once they get to Skyline. I will post the mp3 soon.

The next morning, I was on the first Southwest flight to Orange County to hang out at California State University, Fullerton. Dr. Marc Dickey had programed Shadow Rituals last semester with the Symphonic Winds and decided to program Turkey in the Straw to close their all-folk music concert last night. I will say it is a little intimidating for your own music to follow Lincolnshire Posy on a program, but even after 70+ minutes of music-playing, the group still gave an amazing performance! (Seriously. And this isn’t even the top band.) Once I get a CD, I must post that mp3, too.