Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra of Columbus 11/20

We did a performance at the Barnes and Noble bookstore to help raise money for the orchestra. The concert included Beethoven's First Symphony. The orchestra was broken up into smaller groups and performed throughout the day. I took part in a performance with a quartet of French Horns in the late afternoon which included arrangements of Mozart's The Magic Flute overture and tunes from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance. We also did a few Christmas selections for the holiday season and an arrangement of the Pie Jesu from Faure's Requiem. The quartet was unable to rehearse very often but all things considered, the performances were fine.

Greater Columbus Community Orchestra 11/14

The first half of this concert consisted of music from Schindler's List arranged for Violin and Orchestra and the Introduction and Tarantella also for solo Violin with Orchestra. After intermission, the orchestra did Beethoven's Third Symphony subtitled the "Eroica". These are all first time performances for me and I enjoyed taking part in them. Though I've heard the Eroica many times, I discovered many interesting things in it during rehearsals that I hadn't noticed before.

Westerville Concert Band 11/7

In this concert, we performed selections from Grainger's Lincolnshire Posy suite and an arrangement of tunes from Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess.

Greater Columbus Community Orchestra 9/10

I was a substitute hornist for this performance at the Old Hilliard Days festival. This was a pops concert centered around the Carmen Suite of Georges Bizet. We also did a performance of a concerto for two trumpets by Vivaldi which didn't fit into the category of pops music but it went over pretty well. The soloists, two Ohio State music students, were very good. We went over the allotted time and did not do everything we rehearsed but it was an enjoyable experience.

Westerville Concert Band (7/11)

This one was at the Park of Roses. It went well and was highlighted by Rose Variations a trumpet solo piece performed by Geoff Schleicher, a member of the band's trumpet section. A local weekly newspaper put an edited video of it on its' website: http://www.columbuslocalnews.com/web_tv/?evpvid=15307

Westerville Concert Band 6/27

We performed at Heritage Park in Westerville in front of an old barn. It was an odd place to do a concert. It was hot, humid and very uncomfortable and although the performance went well, the audience didn't seem to respond to the music very much. The concert consisted of the usual summer fare of marches and showtunes.

Clintonville Community Band 5/16

After finishing a gig with the Westerville Band, I did this one at the Whetstone Park of Roses. It was supposed to be an outdoor performance but it was moved indoors due to the threat of rain. A relatively routine summer gig. Lots of marches and showtunes.

Westerville Concert Band 5/16

This concert featured Trumpet soloist Scott Belck, a professor of trumpet at Capital University. We did a piece called Rose Variations and also La Virgen de Macarena. He was a remarkable performer, as good as anyone I've been around in twenty years.

Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra 5/9

This concert by the Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra of Columbus opened with a "Scene" from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. That was followed by the fourth movement of Mahler's Seventh Symphony (the expanded MCO is no longer a chamber orchestra) and Beethoven's Romance for Violin and Orchestra. The soloist, Erin Gilliland, performed it beautifully, and it was a privilege have her be a part of our performance. After the intermission, we opened with Beethoven's Overture to Fidelio followed by the inner two movements of Mahler's Sixth Symphony. The Mahler was a pretty heavy piece, but the audience responded quite well to it. Kudos to all the extras were asked to take part in this performance. Everything went well with the relatively few rehearsals we had with this community orchestra.

Clintonville Community Band (3/21)

I couldn't make it to this program until intermission due to a conflict with work. I was told that Holst's First Suite went well. The second half of the program featured Flourishes and Variants by Barry Kopetz and an arrangement of a Mozart opera overture. They both went pretty well. The Kopetz work was very difficult, with lots of busy writing. The horn part looked like a woodwind part and there wasn't much space to breathe. The main concern for me was to get the solo right. It wasn't perfect, but it was good technically which sufficed.

Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra of Columbus (2/28)

This concert, at Central Presbyterian Church, featured three works. The first was a string piece by Bach, the third Brandenburg Concerto. That's probably my favorite of the six Brandenburgs and I enjoyed it very much. After that, the full orchestra did one of the night music movements of Mahler's Seventh Symphony. It seems odd for an orchestra of about fifty musicians to do this piece but it seemed to work OK. Mahler is one of those late romantic composers who was bent on creating the Greatest Masterpieces in the History of Civilization and the work seems bloated and excessive to me. But certainly he was a very skilled composer and there are plenty of gorgeous moments in this movement. The concert concluded with three dances from Manuel DeFalla's ballet score, The Three Cornered Hat. It is an unusual piece and it was awkward to play. The final dance, as DeFalla called it, had plenty of energy and was my favorite of the three.

Cardinal Health Chamber Orchestra 1/28

I was summoned to be a substitute horn for this gig at Northwood Elementary School in the northern edge of Marysville, Ohio. We did Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf for the schoolkids. They are a pretty good orchestra and the performance went well. The kids seemed to enjoy it.

Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra 12/16

We did Rossini's Barber of Seville Overture, Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto with Ariane Sletner, soloist, Schubert's 5th Symphony and the last movement of Ravel's Rhapsodie Espanol.

Westerville Concert Band 11/1

This performance featured Alfred Reed's "Festive Overture", fondly remembered from my high school days in the late '70s. We also did Jack Stamp's "Chorale and Toccata" which we struggled with through the rehearsals but it seemed to go ok in the performance. Special mention goes to the woodwind section for its performance of an arrangement of the "Royal Fireworks Music". The Bouree was, for me, the highlight of the concert. A somber piece, Robert Spittal's "Pacem - A Hymn for Peace" was also done. When done well as it was in a performance shown on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kURSI4Ua3hQ it is a captivating piece. In my view, we never seemed to get it. The piece is launched by short solos in the trumpet and horn and takes off from there. The solos weren't good and we didn't recover, though the performance as a whole wasn't terrible. We also did a few lighter pieces - show tunes, marches, jazzy things, etc. which went pretty well.

Westerville Concert Band 10/12

This was a rehearsal for the fall concert which is scheduled for 11/2. We had a smaller horn section than usual - three for the first 45 minutes or so, then two more showed up later. As usual, we did so much better with the smaller section. I am not sure why that is. Perhaps we can all hear each other and lock in more. Or maybe with eight people, two or three people missing the mark are gumming up the whole section. The first player did not show and he had the first folder, so there were no solos to be heard in the section. It got me to thinking about how I've never heard a really good horn solo in my six years with the group. It just seems that we have always had capable but lazy, non-practicing people in the first horn chair. This is a really good band and it would be nice if we could develop a good horn section that could keep up with everyone else and a good first player worthy of the other soloists. We are getting better, though. Perhaps in a few years.

Clintonville Community Band 10/7

This was a rehearsal; with no performances imminent, we did run throughs of Christmas music to see what we would like to plan on doing for the holiday concert in December. In the main, Christmas music is Christmas music - though there were a few surprises, including a Fantasia on Greensleeves by Elliot Del Borgo and Emmanuel Variants by Robert Foster. They are very similar works both in sound and in structure. They took the well-known melodies and gave them a number of variations which took them in directions quite different from the original sources. I liked them both, although they might be a little heavy-handed for the holiday concerts which are usually light in content.

We have had five horns in the section for the past few weeks after losing a few and being down to two at times during the summer. We always seem to have a good section with this group despite the constant turnover we have. Oddly, the other band that I'm in, the Westerville Concert Band has a pretty steady lineup of horns, usually six to eight people, but we always struggle - even when we play easier material. The orchestra that I've played in for years, the Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra of Columbus, has the best of both worlds - a steady lineup of solid musicians in the horn section. Unfortunately, I've had to step aside from that group because of a conflict with my job.

GCCO 9/11

The Greater Columbus Community Orchestra did a pops concert in Hilliard for a festival the town was having the weekend of 9/11-13. I was invited to perform with them as a substitute hornist. As a matter of fact, three of the four horns were subs as most of the regulars were unable to do the gig.

We did some music from movies (James Bond, Star Wars, Oklahoma, etc.) and television (Theme from Mission Impossible). We did some light classical (Light Cavalry Overture, and the slow movement of Dvorak 9, with a huge cut).

It went quite well and the audience seemed to enjoy it. I have had few experiences performing pops music with orchestras (though I've had many with bands), so this was a fun gig. I'd like to do another one sometime soon.

Clintonville Community Band 8/23

We shared this date at the Park of Roses gazebo with the Clintonville Community Choir. It was nice to have them around as they added so much to the concert. No other group I've ever been with has had an affiliated group with it and they are a wonderful group to boot. We started the concert with a 40 or so minute set then yielded to the choir for theirs. After they were done we combined to perform an arrangement of "The Battle Hymn to the Republic". We had a guest conductor, Steve Kaufmann, in the absence of our regular conductor, Rick Burkart. Things went pretty well as a whole. A special mention goes to the woodwind section for their standout performance of Pierre LaPlante's "The High Barbaree", a selection of sailing songs.

I remember thinking during the performance how the band used to perform inside the gazebo. Now we'd have a hard time fitting even half of us in it. Usually, we put the percussion in it and the rest of us out in front. Yesterday, the choir used it. The horn section sat directly in front of it, and I noticed how much easier it was to hear us. I think it was because the sound echoing off the concrete steps.

Westerville Concert Band 8/23

We performed at the Coming Home Festival at Alum Creek Park in Westerville. It was a fairly routine concert except that we had James Swearingen with us to conduct his piece, "In the Presence of Heroes". It was more symbolic than anything else, since he wasn't at any of the rehearsals but it was a nice experience to play for the composer. After the gig, I had to quickly sprint out to my next gig with the Clintonville Community Band at the Park of Roses.

Clintonville Community Band 8/19

The band rehearsed for the next performance which is 7 pm 8/23 at the Park of Roses gazebo. We will be performing with our sister organization, the Clintonville Community Choir. We are looking forward to it. The choir will add much to our performance and they bring their audience with them as well. The combined performances always seem to have the best audiences.