Success.

The Schubert "Der Hirt auf Dem Felsen" was almost flawless and lots of great moments.

Brahms Trio- clarinet, cello, piano...we got off to a rocky start but settled down after about 20 seconds or so. It's an 8 minute piece. We've done better but there were no melt-downs and I nailed my big High-G-to-stratosphere-G octave jump perfectly. We started together, ended together and had a bunch of lovely music in between. I call that a WIN despite some hiccups.

The jazz quartet.... I told the crowd (about 60 people) that I had a superpower. Yup. I do...it's "surrounding myself with people who are better than I am", and this was a perfect example of that. Bill on piano was on fire for all three tunes. Joe, understated "Joe the Drummer" was his solid self. I mostly just played the tunes and got out of the way until the last one.

At rehearsal, which lasted 90 minutes and ended an hour before "show time", I said "Nobody but us knows these Brubeck tunes, we should finish with something that everybody will recognize." Joe said "Let's play Autumn Leaves as a bossa!"...Bill is like..."I'm down"...so that's what we did. Joe set us up crazy fast, about 224 bpm, but I know those chord changes so I just took a chorus and did really well - kind of at the outer edge of what I can do, improv wise. The crowd went wild...well. Sort of.

The second half started with a look back at an old 2000-2001 project I did with a very early Digital Audio Workstation, which is kind of a "House" style rock instrumental. My teacher, Jane was rocking out, and my classmate George just gaped at me for a good 20 seconds. He wasn't expecting THAT!

The woodwind quintet was rough, but they did a credible job of my arrangement of Plyve Kacha. The string quartet was even rougher, but good enough that the principal violist in the orchestra wants a shot at the tango's I wrote. So they'll get played at the orchestra chamber music concert in May. Then it was time for the full orchestra.

"Gioia"...which I've posted on the cork before, went better than it did in both rehearsals. The oboist practiced, ditto for the flute player...thank you, guys. My orchestral arrangement of Plyve Kacha sounded good, too. This is the best thing I've done, to date. The horn played got lost in his 3rd time through his solo, but caught up a couple of measures later, so OK...could have been worse.

I conducted those two pieces and we finished with the Pavane by Gabriel Faure, just to demonstrate that I an competently wave a conductors baton in front of an orchestra, if the piece isn't too hard. Two players from the group complimented me on my development as a conductor, so that's a win.

The first half was better than the second half, but it's all good. The chairwoman of the department, who is also my Theory and Harmony teacher, was thrilled to have such a diverse program. She was stoked to actually have a small orchestra of adults on campus. Our campus is a "band and piano" department, there aren't any string players. I don't understand why not, the local high schools crank out crazy amounts of string players but that's how it shakes out.

Anyway it was a solid success....not perfect, but a success. I might make a "sampler" audio file of selections from the concert in a couple of weeks and slap it up here on the cork.

Now to finish my Harmony IV final project, which is a rather Bartok-sounding 3 minute piece for three piano players, playing single hands, each.

Good for for You Congrats
it went well for you

congratulations!

A wonderful program, indeed!
It sounded GREAT and I could tell you enjoyed it!
I am very proud of you!

Congratulations! What a wonderful program.

i can feel both your joy and pride...well done, Maestro!

Awesome!

Excellent!!

Glad it went well.

I bet it did sound nice!