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| This weekend has been an amazing weekend, being a part of a tuba-euphonium conference. So far I have met: Brian Bowman Dan Perantoni Demondrae Thurman Jens Bjorn-Larsen Marc Dickman Jeff Funderburk Wynston Morris and Mike Fahn. A surprisingly pleasant thing happened this afternoon. I had just finished with a reading session lead by Jeff Funderburk, and was standing behind the registration desk hanging out. Dr. Mueller walks up and says that he needs someone to help with the upcoming recital. It was a Brian Bowman and Dan Perantoni recital. I was planning on being in the audience and didn't want to work, but I happened to be the only one there at registration wearing nice enough clothes to be on stage, so I was the obvious volunteer to go help. The tough job I was assigned was to flip pages for Victor Asuncion while accompanied our guests artists. Mr. Asuncion was an amazing pianist. Nearly sightreading he played some very complex music, which to my ear was perfect. The most moving and learning point of this for me was to watch the music as the soloists play it. Which is something I have never done before for anyone past their bachelors degree. To get to do this for performers like Bowman and Perantoni was amazing. I have spent a lot of time with Mike Fahn the valve trombonist from the jazz scene in New York. He has a lot of interesting perspectives for somethings. He didn't bring a straight tenor trombone, so he played on mine for a chart or two at their performance tonight. He made my beautiful trombone sound like a beautiful trombone. He was completely flatered by the students who transcribed and arranged his combo charts for big band. In my opinion, they sounded great like they were originally written for the big band. The Jack Daniels Silver Cornet was a good and entertaining concert. It was good little bit of history of early American music that is still alive and being performed in its original form. Modern Jazz Tuba Project woke my musical spirit to make me realize the musical potential of the two instruments I play. They can do anything I want them to. There is still some to look forward to tomorrow, another reading session, a masterclass by Perantoni, Tenn. Tech has a concert and a wind ensemble concert featuring Domondrae, Bjorn-Larsen and Chris Vivio. I think Perantoni is also playing on this, but he is not listed in the program. It'll be a great day, then I go to play at Neil's on Madison. They tell me Neil's is what you picture of a jazz club in a movie. | | |
| Yesterday I group of my Sinfonian brothers meet with me at my house. We spent 6hrs talking about what it is going to take to get a chapter up and running here at U of M. We actually spent most of that time talking about what our home chapters were like, and music and what each of us like in music. There is an incredible amount of work to be done and it will be a long process. We started dividing up our first step of work to be done. We discussed recruitment and how we get guys interested. We talked about faculty advisors and mentoring chapters. London was a great help, his experience in chartering chapters is going to prove advantageous for us. One of the biggest hurdles is IFC and the issue of being social greek.
I think the best part for me was just being able to hang out with brothers and hopefully soon our circle of brothers will be growing at U of M. I was feeling lonely and missing my brothers from MSU. Right now anyone is invited. We meet Tuesday nights, 8pm, at my house. We have lots of things to accomplish before we can even submit a colonization package to nationals. London told us that we need to be pretty much functioning at that point. My goal, looking at this from where I think we are, I would say that I think we want to be submitting our package hopefully around the end of January. It seems like a long time, but that is my honest estimate at this point. To say that I am excited would be an understatement. The guys left around 2 and I couldn't fall asleep until after 3. That is not me. I am also excited for the men of this school. There has been something missing in the social lives of the men of this music program. I hope this brings change to the social life of everyone in the music department. I can't lie, I hope it brings Kappa Kappa Psi, Tau Beta Sigma, Sigma Alpha Iota, and Mu Phi Epsilon. I have realized that every man will not fit in to Phi Mu Alpha. But I hope these other organizations eventually come around for those that don't and for the women of the music program. | | |
| I can't believe its been a month since I've posted. The time has gone by extremely fast. This month we took a trip to University of Alabama-Birmingham. It was a fun trip as band trips usually are. We had fun at the hotel, but we didn't have to hide like I have always had to before. We had homecoming which was no big whoop, the pep rally was pretty lame. There were fraternities, but none brought there letters like they had at MSU. I had a couple of concerts in jazz and concert bands. They all went pretty well. I had a couple of little euphonium solos. In the past of couple of weeks I have hit this brick as I do most semesters. I just lost every bit of drive I had. I was doing all my work, practicing like I should, and it just died like my hope for football team. I'm trying to get it back. I've had this ever since I came back from Iraq, and some things still get me. This has been the best semester yet, battling my fight against depression. It'll get better, I have to be strong. Teaching is all I want in the world and college is what I have to do to get there. | | |
| Friday night I went to Andre Feagin's clarinet recital that was amazing. It was very possibly the most enjoyable senior recital I have ever been too. I went and practiced after the recital then Lori and I watched the new episode of Grey's Anatomy (which they post on the internet a day after the airing). I woke up late for marching band because I fell asleep in the process of setting my alarm.
Game days are long, but it was fun. The buzz around the stadium is fun. I have to say I was disappointed in our crowd. The "Blue Crew" didn't live up to the expectation I had for them. For those that don't know it's a organization of students that actively support Univ. of Memphis sports. They started a couple of years ago with basketball and have grown and want to support other sports. There are about 550 members. I remember seeing them on tv during C-USA tournament and NCAA tournament and they looked intimidating. Their numbers on Saturday looked intimidating, but their spirit fizzled quickly when our team was not performing too well. They have a motto of "Stand Up or Go Home" I think it is. Well a large majority were sitting before half time. You can't just support the team when they are winning. I do have to say the stadium was daunting to see it at least half orange and probably more.
Our football team is another story. Some decisions were very poor. Several times our recievers would take routes just shorter than the yardage needed to get a first down. It seems fundamental to me. Our coverage of their receivers was very poor. The one thing we had gonig was punts. They maxed out the punting distance on several occasions. It doesn't do much good it the defense can't hold them back from driving down the field 99 yards.
The rest of the day on Saturday we just chilled and relaxed, Lori and I have both been fighting this stomach bug and our stomachs start turning every time we eat. We started to watch the Jim Carey movie, Me, Myself, and Irene, but couldn't keep ourselves awake.
Sunday was a fun day at work. Only one server assistant/busser, where we should have at least two maybe three. But I got out ealry which made me happy. We went to the Mid-South Fair. We walked around, ate fair food, saw some stuff about the history of the fair, saw the art work competition from local schools. I saw my jazz band director, Paul, playing on stage in the beer tent, so we had a beer and watched them play a set. After that was studying and practicing. Made it home around midnight after an hour and half studying and writing a 3 page paper, now I have to get my car tagged and registered and study for my Development test thats in an hour and a half.
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| I have never been this busy before. I think I'm handling it or trying my best at least. On Friday night I played a little pep band at a volleyball game. Our team has only lost 1 game I think and Friday night was a very exciting game. On Saturday we had an exhibition at a marching competition in Jackson, TN. The high school that it was at Liberty Magnet. It was their homecoming the night before and one of the drummers in their band was killed in a wreck the night before the competition. They still performed in his memory that day. We came up to field after warm up and were there almost 10 minutes early. You could see the sky darkening. We entered the field and the snare drummer kicked off our fanfare before the drum majors got the "Drum Majors Matt Tubinis and Victor Sawyer is your band ready?" They were still standing on the field waiting to give their salute and we began playing. Then about a quarter of the way through our show the heavens opened up and it poured for the rest of our show. I love playing in the rain like that. All the tension of screwing something up goes out the window because it doesn't matter at that point. | | |
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