The American Band(stand)

This week I have spent copious amounts of time just listening to music. There have been a number of end-of-quarter ensemble concerts as well as my Romantic-era Music History Final (studying for which required a lot of listening). In order for this post to make sense, I need to elaborate on my love of program music. I love any song, work, or ditty that tells a story or evokes a setting different from the here and now. That's probably why I've always found film scores to be so effective. 

When maestro Mark Gibson gave us a dress-rehearsal pep talk about playing Mahler's Symphony No.6 as though we (the orchestra) were the hero missing from the story composed by a supposedly content (at least at that point in his life) Gustav Mahler, it was as though the world of the symphony sprung to life right before my eyes. For those of you unfamiliar to the piece, it's particularly dark, even for Mahler, though I don't think I would call it sad. Creepy would be a more fitting adjective. Or, as Maestro Gibson so aptly put it, 'like a Johnny Depp movie'. 

Playing in this Mahler concert was perhaps one of the most invigorating and simply enjoyable performance experiences of my life. The piece came alive onstage as it never had for this orchestra before. On page 19 I got so wrapped up in the music that I grabbed the wrong instrument and played flute instead of piccolo (or was it piccolo instead of flute? ...oops. Good thing the part was doubled!) for about half a page. It felt as if the orchestra really had become the missing hero that Mahler himself couldn't compose. 

The next day I was able to attend an all-Sousa concert by the Wind Symphony. And what a concert it was. I've always been a fan of some good ol' American music. Love me some Copland, Barber, Liebermann...but I suppose most of you already knew that. I also spent a good chunk of my childhood wishing that I lived in River City Iowa about a hundred years ago so I could hang out with Professor Harold Hill, but I digress... Since there is nothing like music to take you away, the concert was a really great opportunity to take a load off from the emotional overload that was the Mahler symphony. I felt as though I really had taken a mini vacation to a simpler time where the most pressing issue at hand was finding a date to the town picnic. Gosh, wouldn't that be the life? 

I will leave you now with some turn-of-the-century inspiration in the form of Robert Preston (The Music Man. Matthew Broderick just can't compete) and vintage-inspired dresses by Modcloth. 

Photo credits: Google images and Modcloth.

I've Been Thinking...

A number of things have been on my mind lately; of course they've all been related to music, fashion, and the simple pleasures of life...what more do I think about?

First of all, I've been thinking about music in the church. The Lutheran church, to be exact. Mine. In the midst of solfege-singing my way through hymns that alternate between 12/8 and 8/8 (wtf?) I was reminded of the worst Easter ever. It was my senior year of high school. I woke up early to straighten my hair, paint my nails, and put on the perfect dress. We drove to church, and I immediately noticed the first red flag; people in jeans. They were everywhere. There were people in jeans, sweatshirts, T shirts, it was terrible. I was humiliated for them. It's like wearing a parka to the beach: who does that? THEN. I grab a bulletin only to discover that Jesus Christ is Risen Today was not on the agenda for the day. Seriously? No Easter dresses, No classic Easter hymns? It was like Easter hadn't happened at all. To make matters even better, they changed the kyries to some atonal contemporary crap that couldn't have been sung by anyone without perfect pitch. I was furious. So there. Music and aesthetics alone are enough to make or break any day. Then yesterday in church I couldn't help but notice the lack of Bach in our services. Sure part of it may be because certain organists just don't have the technical capabilities to play even sixteenth notes, but really? The father of modern piano playing and part of the reason we even have music (besides Gregorian chant) in church services not included in today's churches? Blasphemy!

Fashion. I went to the Mall of America last week for the first time in over a year and it was terrible. It was the first time in ages that I'd been around so much disposable fashion and all I could think about was how evil it all was! Ok why pay six times as much as I do for the same styles I get at thrift stores in really poor quality fabrics that will rip, come undone, or pill up after a few wears. Seriously, here I go harping on disposable fashion again, but I believe in it so deeply that I couldn't not say something! My clothes fit better, last longer, and cost less than anything you could find at the mall. Plus, I'm cutting down on the waste that is a result of the terribly polluting disposable fashion industry! Win-win-win-win!!!!

Finally, the simple pleasures of summertime and my youth! I've spent a lot of time this summer feeling terrible about not being at a music festival, about missing my friends in Cincinnati, and about feeling generally unmotivated all the time. But there are a lot of things I could be enjoying. Yesterday I went to the beach at Lake Calhoun. Ok first of all way nicer than Lake Nokomis; better view, you can swim out further, more entertaining people watching, more ugly tattoos...I remembered that summer is about soaking up the sun, wearing cuter bikinis than everyone around you, and singing along to cool tunes. And I got worried about losing my youth before I get to take advantage of it! So I'm not going to spend the rest of my summer enjoying all that the sun and heat have to offer...also finishing painting my shelves, work eight hours a day at the fair starting Thursday, practice driving...so much to do!

What I've Learned The Past Few Days

Marion, South Dakota is a very mysterious place. As it seems to me, the town is a place where innocent people are trapped until either they fade away into oblivion (like mom’s grandma, who got a sailor's mouth in her old age, according to my uncle), serve some sort of purpose (like ‘grandpa Charlie’ who was ‘the saint to guide her’ and lived to be almost a hundred), or the town decides to dispose of on it’s own (all the people who’ve died in various explosions and mysterious deaths). The town seems to attract the sort of occurrences that one would only expect in the Bermuda triangle, like the entire sewage line exploding, an entire farm being sucked up in a tornado, and how all the old records burned in the newspaper fire. My cousin and I discussed how much fun it would be to send the whole pack of cousins down next summer to investigate the town as a whole. The whole expedition could become a movie that is sort of Paper Heart meets Letters to Juliet with a hint of Ghost Hunters.

I have created yet another definition for art; anything man-made that upon observation takes you somewhere. So music is the most obvious example; duh, listening to a Strauss waltz makes you feel like you’re in Vienna three hundred years ago. Art can work the same way; you look at a Monet and you can just imagine the sound of the water rippling as goldfish swish through it. Fashion is an art in that you judge people based on what they’re wearing; I see a vintage dress and I can imagine both the hipster lifestyle of the emaciated trendsetter wearing it and Audrey Hepburn as it’s original owner. When you take this definition at its full value, one could also consider sports an art because of the emotion spectators get from watching their favorite team win the World Cup.

Engineers are on such a different wavelength that they make jazz boys look more like cellists. Math/Science-minded people (lets call them M/Sers for the sake of shorthand) are all of the mindset that there is one right answer (and most of the time it is theirs). These people are impossible to argue (or sometimes even converse with) because of their inability to empathize or even begin to hear out any other perspectives or ideas. My brother will be an M/S major someday. That was snotty, I'm having a hard time empathizing today...

I don’t care what people say or think, I love vintage clothes. I have always loved to wear things that other people might not exactly want to wear themselves. I mean there were the cowboy boots and leggings in ninth grade (wayyy before you could find leggings in stores…I had to buy long underwear!), the toothpaste tights and matching sweater in tenth grade (for those of you that didn’t have the pleasure of witnessing this fashion masterpiece, let’s just say the ensemble, which is somewhere between aquamarine and teal, was recycled for a Halloween costume (toothpaste, of course) two years later…), the solid-sequins dresses in eleventh grade (which my mother gave to the thrift store while I was away at orchestra camp), and finally wearing brightly colored patterned tank tops under plaid lumberjack shirts my senior year (which is quite the style nowadays, don’tcha know?)…I’m really just ahead of my time! Just wait until you see the new frocks I bought this week, I expect more than a few keyboards will need to be de-drool-ed.

There is no such thing as ‘normal’. The ‘N’ word is relative to individuals. I’d say I’m a pretty normal person, but how many 19-year-olds can honestly say that they expect to release a CD in their lifetimes? How many kids my age get paid to do what was usually their free time in high school? How many kids can actually say that they are more excited for their career than they are for Christmas? Me. Also it’s not like I spend twelve hours a day locked up alone in a practice room…I probably have more fun than you, too…just sayin'. On another note, my family is from the aforementioned Marion, South Dakota, where slavery may or may not exist and children are named after zoo animals...

On that note...happy August everyone! Enjoy the last moments of summer!

(All photos from Google)