Hezekiah and I have been through a lot together. Band rehearsals three or four times a week for most of middle school and high school. Clarinet lessons. Concerts. Music festivals. Four years of pep band, including: the time it snowed at lacrosse, the time I chipped my mouthpiece by dropping my clarinet at Lynah, the time it poured at sprint football, and the other time it poured at baseball. We’ve rattled around in buses, bumped along on my bike, been carted around in cars, soared on a plane, and made the move from New England to Ithaca to Ann Arbor. Our latest venture: the Ann Arbor Concert Band.
The week I moved into my apartment, Hezekiah, Cyrille, and I set off to conquer the Ann Arbor bus system. Earlier that day, I had gone to get my MCard made, so we rode for free, courtesy of the University of Michigan. With the help of Google maps and my phone, I found the site where auditions were being held. A couple of weeks later, I found myself at my first concert band rehearsal in over four years. Over the next two hours, we sight read Vaughn Williams, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, and the now infamous Menotti. Sight reading is not one of my best musical skills. It was a long two hours.
As a perennial stalwart of the third clarinet section, my talents lean more toward things not involving high notes or fast rhythms, or horror of horrors, high notes and fast rhythms. Polka bass line with the tubas? You got it. Obscure part written only into the third clarinet and second trumpet? Sure thing. Counting 78 measures of the same note? No problem.
Why do I mention these things? Because I spent the year back in the third clarinet section. I alternated between the third and first clarinet parts in high school, played second clarinet in pep band, and am now reprising my role in the wonderful world of the third clarinet, with occasional forays into the fourth clarinet part. It’s been a great experience so far. When I decided to go to grad school, I knew that I didn’t want to be shut up in my office all the time. The purpose of grad school is to be doing research, but I’ve met grad students from Cornell who weren’t sure where the Dairy Bar was. It’s the Dairy Bar. There’s ice cream there. Ice cream. Cold, delicious, creamy ice cream in all sorts of flavors you never knew you wanted to try. And also cheese curds.
That’s one of the reasons I joined a community band – to get off campus and be a part of the community I’ll be living in for the next few years. A couple weeks ago, I played my fourth concert with the AACB, the last concert of this season before our summer break. There was a lot of fun music. “Slava!” by Leonard Bernstein – the wind ensemble at my high school played it one year, a piece by Grainger – I played a different piece by him that involved singing my second year at district band, “Hungarian Rondo” by Carl Maria von Weber – I butchered the first movement of his clarinet concerto in F minor at all state auditions my senior year of high school. It was a good concert. Signing off now; I should go practice my long tones and syncopation.
