A History of Music and I, Part Six

Welcome to part 6 of A History of Music and I, this post will focus on high school concert band between 10th and 12th grades and All County Band for those years also. So freshman year band was interesting, but there was more in store for me as an upperclassman. My sophomore year introduced to me what would become a regular fixture until I graduated: student teachers. Each student teacher was around for a semester and each student teacher had their own way of going about music. A few of them even got teaching gigs at schools in the county, most notably Mr. Scott who took over when Mr. Kilby took up the mantle of band director at Severna Park High right after I graduated from high school, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to my days in the band. Another year of band at Meade High meant another year of at least one John Philip Sousa march, which was fine by me as I enjoyed his sound. So I don't remember as much of the repertoire we performed during those three years (thankfully I kept all the concert programs, ha ha!), but I do remember Mr. Scott leading the band through Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, which was interesting because there were so many time signature changes, and not all of them were 4/4 to 3/4, there were measures of 6/4 and 5/4 to contend with, and I'm pretty sure there were some time signatures where the eight was in the musical "denominator". Band festivals were interesting as we performed to be judged, but that meant I was out of school for the day and eating not school food. I seem to remember events better than what I played, I'm not sure how I feel about not remembering everything though. Anyways, I was in All County Band each year. Sophomore year All County Band we got our chance to play A+, a piece in which a few mistakes are allowed and mathematically calculated to ensure that even with mistakes the band still performed at an A+ level. Junior year All County Band was held at my high school, which meant I missed school while at school, whoo! Meade High band tended to do well with the amount of musicians in the All County Band while I attended high school. I forgot to mention in my last post that at graduation, the band and the orchestra play the Pomp and Circumstance procession, the recession, and a performance piece. The procession always took the longest as the graduating seniors were told to walk in at a stately pace while I enjoyed the recession more as there was more fanfare in the music and everyone had a pep in their step. I played all three pieces between 9th and 11th grades while in 12th I played only the performance piece. I never made first chair, but that was okay, 2nd and 3rd chair was good in a section of 12-15 clarinets.

Stay tuned, I'll be trying to recall my jazz band career next.

A History of Music and I, Part Five

Welcome to the fifth part of a series of posts documenting my history with music. This will focus on ninth grade in 2009 and 2010.

After middle school, I was anticipating high school band and for the first time, I would be performing in marching band. I was told by Mr. Kilby the band director that there was need for low brass, so I borrowed a euphonium for a few weeks over the summer, but when it came time to start band camp, I was still playing the clarinet, which would prove to be a blessing physically. I got the music for the year's marching show and tried to tackle it before band camp started, but it proved to be an interesting mix of easy and challenging before I was told to memorize it. Memorize the entire show's music? That sounded like a tall order, yet I managed to eventually get there, but I'm getting ahead of myself. So the summer passed by quickly, and after a vacation that I may recall in a future post, I was off to band camp at Meade High School. I brought my clarinet, my music, and a pencil (always bring a pencil) with me, ready to learn.  I met the band and I saw many people who attended the other (Meade) middle school that feeds into the high school (I attended MacArthur Middle). The drum majors proceeded to enter the practice field and command the band into formation so that we'd get the day started right. We proceeded to learn the basics throughout the week and get started on the show. There was so much to learn such as drill, flanking, and of course marching. Often the instrument groups split up to do small group type stuff, so I got to spend time with the other clarinetists. If there was one thing I would change about Meade Marching Band, it would have been more self-discipline among the individuals in the band. Only if we were more self-disciplined, we wouldn't have been yelled at by the senior drum major as much, which in this case the senior drum major yelling for us to get to set is a mix of scary and funny at the same time. I'll just say a petite lady yelling with ferocity is to be taken seriously.

So band camp passed and we had a cookout where the band performed some stuff and then everyone feasted then school started shortly after that. The concert (or was it symphonic?) band was a lot larger than the marching band and I learned that the senior drum major played the clarinet just like me! Concert band for the most part was like band class in middle school, full band practice, clarinet practice, and some tests. Though before I go back to marching band, the repertoire for the concert band was very cool to me with pieces such as Sleigh Ride, the Liberty Bell March (or Monty Python theme as some people remember it), and Malagueña.

In Marching band, we participated in competitions where we were judged and graded on our performance. I won't reveal any scores though, my bad! We also participated in the Jessup Day Parade and played at home football games and showed off our work. The competitions had us traveling all over the place and me being a hungry 14 year old, I always sought out the food stands as soon as I was able to. I'll just say that Broadneck High School and Frawley Stadium would be stiff competition food wise. We managed to eke in to the ACCs (Atlantic Coast Championship, even though when I say ACC I mean the conference) and managed to score an 80 at our final competition of the year. Not bad!

Shortly after marching band ended, the band director Mr. Kilby passed out forms for interest in jazz band. I didn't act immediately upon the first offer, but when Mr. Kilby needed more sax, I was interested and he let me borrow a school instrument. I'll save jazz band for a future post.

Sorry for the wall of text, but there were so many memories made my freshman year. I'd also like to thank Mr. Kilby for giving me many opportunities to further myself, the clarinet section for the community and camaraderie, and Kaitlyn, the aforementioned Drum Major for being a great leader and eventually a great friend. Thank you y'all!

I have decided to split the next posts in this series as follows: One more post for marching band (high school and college), one post for jazz band, one post for my instruments, and one post for concert band. The jazz band post will be released first and the instruments post will be my final post in the series.

Also, I made it to All County Band for the third time.