All-Region Jazz Band & Saturday Night Live Returns

This weekend was our Region's All-Region Jazz Band weekend, and I was very fortunate to have been asked to conduct the second high school Jazz Band (although, in jazz you don't really conduct very much, so I guess I directed it).

I was getting increasingly nervous about teaching for such long stretches of time (three hours on Friday and basically six hours on Saturday), but with the energy of the good band and their solid work ethic, we made quick work of those nine hours and gave (what was in my estimation) pretty dang good concert. (Come to think of it, nine hours sounds like a long time, not a short time, so I shouldn't have ever thought that I didn't have enough time, but you would be surprised how quickly those sessions go by!)

Anyhow, the concert was last night and it featured my little group first, then the top high school group (kudos, too!), then the Amarillo Jazz Orchestra, which is comprised of area music educators and other jazz enthusiasts. What a band! They sounded great and I enjoyed every minute of it.

The guest clinician and artist for the evening was Mr. Glenn Kostur (glennkostur.com) who is the head of the jazz department at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He, for a number of years, was in the sax section for Maynard Ferguson's band and was also the music director. It's pretty safe to say that he has chops and street cred that puts all of us to shame!

What a nice guy too, a pleasure to sit down to dinner with (as we were able to do twice). It was funny watching all of the sax guys who teach in our Region ask him endless pedagogical questions and, "do you have an alternate fingering for this," or "what is your tongue really doing in the altissimo register?" Those are the sorts of conversations that I like to listen to, but I can assure that a very low amount of comprehension is actually taking place in my brain. There was a lot of "trophy wife" look on my face: sit there and look pretty and try to pretend that you know what we're talking about. (I think I can fake comprehension. Pretty? Maybe not...)

When Glenn was featured with the AJO, he pulled out his tenor and finished one of his solos playing so high that it was reminiscent of Lenny Picket's playing on every opening of every Saturday Night Live. (You know the playing... It's so high, it doesn't seem humanly possible.)

Well, what a great segue way to my next topic: Now that the writer's strike has come to a close, my guilty pleasure has returned with all new episodes: Saturday Night Live.

Now, let's be honest, I don't love every sketch from every show, but I find that SNL's humor is really closely in line with my own.

Where was Maya Rudolph? I'll be mad if she has left the show. Kayla and I actually re-watched the introduction of the show to make sure she wasn't mentioned, and, she wasn't mentioned in the opening credits! This is disastrous! She's one of the funniest ones! Thanks goodness that Kristen Wiig is still on. She's my new favorite.

Anyhow, the first half of the show was pretty funny (including a pretty good Weekend Update), but I couldn't help but to think that the first SNL back from the strike would be overwhelmingly funny. Well, it was pretty good, but it wasn't near the caliber that I thought it would be. For real, what were those writers doing for all of that time? I know they weren't writing, but you're telling me that they weren't thinking about ideas to use when the strike was over...???

The highlight of the episode was an appearance by Mike Huckabee. Without giving away his segment on Weekend Update, I'll just say to scoot over to NBC.com and watch it -- if it's posted...

Now off to grill chicken on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Then, tomorrow night is our first Percussion Ensemble Concert of the spring. After that, I am remarkably open schedule-wise, as we await baby number #2!

TMEA, Baby #2 nears...

I'm writing this from San Antonio in the great state of Texas! I've been here for the Texas Music Education Association's annual convention, known by it's abbreviation, TMEA.

There is so much to mention, I don't know where to start. A good place might be the high quality of concerts you can attend here. On Thursday, I heard the WTAMU Symphonic Band play and it was tremendous. There's not a very good way to describe how well they did without using words that are overused like 'great,' 'awesome,' 'amazing.' See? That didn't really do it for you, did it? So, I'll put it this way, if I had been on that stage, that might have been the best performance I had ever given. As a listener, it ranks right up there with the two or three other truly memorable concerts I've attended at TMEA. (Two others that stand out in my mind are the University of Houston and Langham Creek HS, both from last year.)

Then, there's my dad's booth that he runs in the exhibit hall to support his double reed making business. I do what I can to help out -- but mainly it gives me a place to stow my stuff and a chance to catch up with my dad. (I'm finding out that people only really ask three questions, and I find out the answers to those up front, so I can field 90% of the questions I'm asked...)

Additionally, there are a bunch of very valuable clinics to attend for me to learn new teaching techniques, etc.

And last, but not least, this week gives me a chance to promote my writing through word of mouth and to meet contacts who might want me to do some freelance arranging for them.

Sorry. No pictures for this blog entry. I even thought to pack my camera, but haven't remembered to take any pictures...

We'll head back to Amarillo tomorrow -- yes, we drove -- and will be back to school on Monday where it's time to prepare for Band Contest, and finish preparations on the Percussion Ensemble Concert.

After that, you'll see blog entries about the new addition to our family debuting on our around March 3rd!

Busy Days and String Theory for Dummies

Given that I haven't made a blog entry for a month and a half, it should go without saying that it has been a busy January and February has proved no different.

One should also deduce that if I'm writing a blog entry, I'm procrastinating on/about/for/in-as-much-as/from a project that really needs my immediate attention. That person would be correct. I'm totally 'worked' out for the day, but can't bring myself to go to bed yet.

Kayla is still pregnant and Regan is as cute as ever. If you really want to see the family side of things, you should go read the Rath Family blog that Kayla maintains. She does a bang-up job of keeping it current and she is always snapping pictures to include.

Her expertise in blogging all things 'family' frees me up to really get lots of quality procrastinating done. Which explains how I came upon this gem. 'String Ducky' is a short film that was selected from many entries in a contest to see who could most succinctly sum up String Theory in two minutes or less.

I don't know quite how I landed on this (probably by 'googling' something about String Cheese...), but it's interesting. And by interesting, I mean that I hardly ever use the word as a psynonym to 'curious.' You see, to me, "interesting" usually means "bad," or "unexplainable," or in this case "so completely beyond my ability to understand, that saying 'interesting' will maybe make me look not as ignorant."

Enjoy it. If you have the same reaction as I did, you'll want to take a nap at the end of those two minutes: