Night of the Bassoon

I celebrated "good chord structure" the other day. And I don't know if it was me being sick, but the band sounded MUCH better tonight that it has in the past. I also played the hell out of my bassoon. In fact - it turned into night of the bassoon to some extent at rehersal. Bill opened practice with "Chorale and Shaker Dance" which at the beginning has some exposed bassoon. Then we played "God of Our Fathers" - specifically the section with the basooon/piccolo duet. And I was rockin' out. I swear we played that part of the song 10 times. Then after break we did "Rhosymedre"(which translated to "beautiful" in Welsh - so Tim says). It is a nice song. And has a lot of exposed bassoon as well. In fact at one point Tim was working with the clarinets and then proceeded to call me out. "You all are lucky to have a good bassoon player," or something like that. Then REALLY called me out and had me play my part all by myself. Of course I sort of sucked it up, but it ended OK. He even complimented Betty (piccolo player) and I for the nice job we did earlier in the evening. :-) So - YEAH LESLIE! :-)

Just as FYI - our folder is filled with...
- Rhosymedre, Ralph Vaughan Willams (arranged by Walter Beeler)
- Sea Songs, Ralph Vaughan Willams
- Chorale and Shaker Dance, John P. Zdechlik
- God of Our Fathers, Claude T. Smith (arranged by George Warren)
- "A Chorus Line" Spectacular!, Marvin Hamilson/Edward Kleban (arranged by Warren Barker)
- Old Comrades March, Carl Teike (adapted by Harold R. Gore)
- Santiago Carnival, Claude T. Smith
- Deep River, James Swearingen
- (and as always) The Stars and Stripes Forever, John Philip Sousa (edited by Keith Brown)

So - another REALLY cool thing is that Roger Pemberton is playing with us now. I don't think I mentioned that in the last post - or did I? I can't remember. He is a FINE musician. Very honored he is in our ensemble.

But, I will blog more later. Gots to get to bed!


(Oh and thanks to someone for telling me that the photos I put up in the last post busted the template - sort of.)