Red Raider Showcase

On November 6th, the middle school and high school choirs performed for a packed house at the Red Raider Showcase. The show was phenomenal, and I highly recommend attending this annual event! I was glad to see current students in the audience and former students in the audience and onstage. It's amazing to see the growth of our kids and the immense amount of talent in Pulaski! Congratulations to the performers and their directors, Mrs. Amy Wright (PCMS) and Ms. Elissa Richardson (PHS), as well as everyone else who helped make the Red Raider Showcase a success.

The Pulaski High School Choirs started off the show with director Elissa Richardson's arranged medley of "Love Runs Out" and "Rumor Has It."

Up next was a student-composed barrel drumming feature (complete with costumes!) titled "A Work in Progress."

The third performance of the night was a self-accompanied vocal solo, "Warrior," by Demi Lovato.

The Treble Choir took the stage to perform "Wings" by Little Mix.

Composer Claude Debussy's piano solo Sunken Cathedral made an appearance.

The PHS Chamber Choir sang a beautiful a cappella Pentatonix song, "Run to You."

Two students choreographed a dance duet to "Everybody Talks" by Neon Trees.

A student sang "Endlessly" by The Cab.

Look at all of these guys! The 7th-12th grade men joined forces to sing "Stand By Me." What a great way to build connections between the middle school and high school programs!

Up next was a vocal solo/dance duet with instrumental accompaniment: "Dear Future Husband" by Meghan Trainor.

The last song before intermission was the Green Day song "21 Guns," performed by the PHS Choirs.

Act II started with an '80s throwback! The PHS Show Choir performed "Footloose."

The next piece consisted of two vocalists (one of whom arranged the medley), a guitarist, and a percussionist. Destin played the cajon for this song - it's essentially a fancy box that you sit on while you play. The group performed a medley of "Thinkin' Bout You" (Frank Ocean) and "Sunday Morning" (Maroon 5).

Next, Ellis sang some Elvis - "If I Can Dream."

The 7th-12th grade women took the stage to sing Rachel Platten's "Fight Song," arranged by PHS choir director Elissa Richardson.

After the beautiful inspiration of the last song, it was time for some humor. If you weren't there, you missed a hilarious vocal duet with self-accompanied accordion and tuba. (Welcome to Pulaski, haha!) "Shaving Cream" by Benny Bell got the audience giggling, and sometimes even guffawing.

The PHS Concert Choir sang "Falling Slowly," arranged by one of the students.

The student emcees kept the audience entertained during the swift transitions, at one point resorting to using some didgeridoos. The whole concert was a touch over two hours, counting 21 songs and a 15 minute intermission. It flew by!

A dance solo to "Fortune Teller" was next.

The last solo performance of the night was "Angels" by Birdy.

The PHS Drumline made an appearance! They played a medley of drumline cadences, arranged by instructor Adam LeGrave and the drumline. I hear they got *glowing* reviews.

Drumline video: https://goo.gl/photos/2zeUf2XZ8C4deGWy6

The 7th grade, 8th grade, and high school choirs combined for a grand finale, "It's Time," by Imagine Dragons.

Happy birthday, John Philip Sousa!

Today, we celebrate the 161st anniversary of John Philip Sousa's birth!

John Philip Sousa was a very famous American conductor and composer who is known as the March King since he wrote so many marches. One of his marches, "Stars and Stripes Forever," was voted by the United States Congress to be the official national march of the United States of America! He also led his own band, wrote 136 marches and 10 operas, wrote 3 novels and an autobiography, and conducted about 14,000 (yes, that's 14 thousand) concerts throughout his life!

I'll leave you with this video of The President's Own performing "Stars and Stripes Forever."

If you're interested in hearing more of John Philip Sousa's marches, do a YouTube search for him or check out the collections that The President's Own is compiling on their website. Click here to access videos, scores, and parts of 17 of his marches. Click on the one you'd like to hear, and it will bring you to a page for that piece. You can click to download the track (in mp3 format, if you want to put it on your phone/iPod/iPad/etc.), download the score and parts (see what the conductor sees or what the individual musicians see), or scroll down a little further to listen to it via embedded video. What's neat about the video is that they also have the score so you can try to follow along as the music plays! It's very small, though, even when you click the YouTube logo in the bottom right corner to be able to open it via YouTube and make it full screen. If you're struggling to read it, you can download the score separately. If you'd like me to listen to it with you so I can point out where we are in the music, I'd be more than happy to do so!


DRUM CARD OPPORTUNITY: Email me and tell me your favorite Sousa march other than "Stars and Stripes Forever." I don't expect you to listen to all 135 other ones, but you can tell me about one or two that you listened to. :)

Happy birthday, Adolphe Sax!

Today marks the 201st anniversary of the birth of Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone. In honor of his birthday, here are some fun facts about him.

1. Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone when he was 32 years old.
2. He invented more than just the saxophone, but that was the instrument that caught on the best.
3. He was from Belgium.
4. He was an expert at the flute and clarinet, studying performance on those two instruments (as well as voice) at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. (If you join band on one of these woodwind instruments, you'll notice that the fingering system for flute, clarinet, oboe, and saxophone are very similar. They're also similar to recorder!)
5. He survived many near-death experiences in childhood.
6. He improved someone else's design of the bass clarinet.
7. In 1857, he got a teaching job at the Paris Conservatoire.

If you haven't been to Google today, check out their Adolphe Sax doodle!

For more cool things in the saxophone family, check out the following video:

DRUM CARD OPPORTUNITY: Email me the coolest thing you saw in the saxophone video above.

4th grade: Civic Symphony field trip 2015

Tomorrow, the 4th graders will be attending the Civic Symphony of Green Bay's school concert. The program will include some shorter versions of full pieces, so I wanted to share some videos for each entire piece in case you are interested in hearing them again (perhaps at the night concert!). I've also included some brief background info about the pieces they'll be playing tomorrow morning.

And God Created Great Whales

This piece by American composer Alan Hovhaness uses pre-recorded sounds of whales in addition to the voices from the orchestra. The video is over 12 minutes in length; we'll do the entire piece at the evening concert, but it will be a shorter excerpt for the morning concert. This piece uses a technique where the players in the orchestra each get a short series of notes to play, but the composer asks them to play that series many times, and in overlapping rhythms.

"CATcerto"

In classical music a concerto is a piece that features a soloist, either an instrumentalist or singer, and they usually stand in front of the orchestra. In this piece, the CATcerto, our soloist is Nora the Piano Cat. The composer had a video of Nora playing, and has written the orchestral accompaniment to match the music that Nora created. Our conductor will be watching the video to match up the live music from the orchestra to the recorded piano music from the video. It is similar to how orchestras used to provide music for silent movies 100 years ago.

Die Fledermaus

Die Fledermaus is an overture by the composer Johann Strauss. This video is 9 minutes long - we will play the entire piece at the evening, but at the morning concert we'll do just a short bit of the introduction. It is approx. the first 30 seconds of this video.  "Fledermaus" translates to "The Bat". The piece is about a man who dresses up in a bat costume for costume party, he is mentioned through the operetta as "Dr. Bat" by his friends, who are making fun of him.

Peter and the Wolf

Peter is the star of our concert, and you will hear his adventures told through the sounds of the orchestra. Our narrator is Stuart Smith, who will tell the tale of Peter as he leaves his yard, goes into the more dangerous meadow and encounters a mean wolf. With the help of some animal friends (a bird, a duck and a cat) and some nearby hunters, Peter comes up with a clever solution to his problem where nobody gets hurt. The music is by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev.

During the evening concert, the Civic Symphony will also be performing movements from Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saens. 

Breaking Orchestral Ground in Australia

I saw this news yesterday and had to share it! When lots of people think about conductors (especially orchestra conductors), they picture men. Worldwide, fewer than a dozen women lead major orchestras. That's why I make it a point in class to share videos of multiple conductors like Gustavo Dudamel and Marin Alsop. 

Here's some news from the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in Australia: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/mexican-conductor-alondra-de-la-parra-makes-history-n454731. The news article has information plus a very short video. 

Here's my summary: Alondra de la Parra is a 34-year-old conductor who was born in New York and has lived in Mexico since she was two. She's traveled the world for music, conducting in places like Italy, Brazil, Sweden, Japan, Germany, France, and the United States. She just won the job of chief conductor and music director for the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in Australia! She's the first woman to hold that position in that ensemble, which is one of the three largest orchestras in Australia.

Here's a video of her rehearsing Arturo Marquez's Danzon No. 2 with the Orchestre de Paris last year. She was the first woman and the first Mexican to get that opportunity, which is neat. She's got some great facial expressions and some energetic left hand gestures! It looks like she would be a fun conductor to work with, especially with such a fun piece to play. I performed the band transcription of that my senior year of college, and it was a blast - we couldn't sit still while playing it! (In the video of de la Parra rehearsing it, you get a great view of the violas.) 

This is Gustav Mahler's 2nd symphony, which Ms. de la Parra will be leading the QSO in next year. In this video, she's conducting a Brazilian orchestra playing the same piece. The video is just a small section of the entire work, which is about an hour and a half long. Mahler (the composer) was known for writing very brass-heavy, long symphonies. Ms. de la Parra is excited to be performing it at the same age that Mahler was when he wrote it. 

DRUM CARD OPPORTUNITY: What is one thing that stands out to you about Alondra de la Parra's conducting style? (You can reply with your response. Be specific, and don't plagiarize from my descriptions.)