BCMEA Wrap-Up

Thanks to everyone who attended our session at BCMEA yesterday and thanks to BCMEA for having us. I hope that everyone who was there got something out of the session. I would enjoy hearing any comments that you might have regarding the session. Did you enjoy the music? Did you enjoy the performance? Will there be repertoire that we presented that you will perform with your own ensembles? Did you find the repertoire to be at the right level? Too easy? Too hard? Would you be interested in hearing PSWE at a BCMEA session again in the future? If so, would there be specific repertoire that you would like to hear or would you rather hear PSWE present on a topic such as rehearsal techniques, seating the ensemble, or perhaps instrumentation issues? Any thoughts that you have are more than welcome. Please feel free to respond via the comment link below (preferred) or privately via email at info@pswe.ca.

Special thanks go to Northwest Music, Ariel Music, G&M Brand, Studio Music and Maecenas Music for providing the materials and to Adam Gorb and the Royal Northern College of Music for making it possible for Adam to be in attendance.

PSWE and Adam Gorb at BCMEA

The British Columbia Music Educators Association is presenting their annual conference today and tomorrow. It looks like there will be some good sessions for band folk. Adam Gorb is presenting this morning and, judging by his notes, this should be an excellent session. Tomorrow morning, PSWE will be presenting a session on contemporary band repertoire from the UK. Adam will be helping out and adding his comments as PSWE plays nine works from the pens of seven different composers. All works are playable by school bands at various different levels. Both of these sessions will occur at 10:15am: Adam's today and PSWE's tomorrow (Saturday). Hopefully we will see you there. If you read about this on on the blog, make a point of coming by and telling me. I always like to know who is reading.

Special thanks to Northwest Musical Services, Ariel Music, Maecenas Music, G&M Brand Music, and Studio Music for their support of the PSWE session on Saturday and to the Royal Northern College of Music for getting Adam here to present.

Adam is here! And What a Show!

Thanks to everyone who was at Evergreen Cultural Centre last night. I'd picked up Adam at the airport just after noon yesterday, got him settled into his hotel, got him dinner and headed to Evergreen. After a brief sound check, we were ready to play.

Daniel Tones navigated his way through the fortress of percussion instruments to prepare to begin Elements. After a brief nod, we were off. Everyone played brilliantly. There are always spots in a piece like this that all hell can break loose. The intricate rhythms and balance of the various instruments in the ensemble can make it treacherous if one person makes a small mistake. When you are rehearsing a piece with a soloist, your time with the soloist is usually limited as well, making the co-ordination of solo part with ensemble feel under-rehearsed. Outside of one long measure - which is marked "chaotic" - hell never broke loose! In fact the were many exciting and many beautiful moments throughout the half-hour work. This was likely the sixth performance of this piece and the first one on this side of the Atlantic. Adam was very pleased with how it came off.

The second half was a gas. Midnight in Buenos Aires was stunning, Candlelight Procession was moving, Burlesque was brilliant and Dances from Crete was a smashing success (pun intended). It was so great to hear the results of the short but intense rehearsal run up to this concert. Special thanks go to Danny for being such a great soloist and so easy to work with, Scott and DJ for putting in all their hard work for their special roles - I look forward to the next opportunity to have you both work with us and hope that there will be more for you to play, Alan R. for again organizing the move of more percussion gear than we have ever had on one stage, and Adam for writing such great music and coming all the way from Manchester to hear us play it.

I hope that I'll be able to get some pictures up on the blog in the coming days and also hope that maybe a soundbite or two will make here if I can figure out how to do that.

On to BCMEA and Christmas!

Dress Rehearsal

Last night was our dress rehearsal in the concert hall. It was good to discover that we can, in fact, fit every piece of percussion gear that we need on stage! It's a tight fit, but with a large shoe horn, we can do it. We also had a group from Heritage Woods Secondary School com and listen to the rehearsal. I had a chance to speak with them before the rehearsal got going and I understand that many of them will be back tomorrow night for the full performance. They had to leave before the rehearsal was finished. I hope that they enjoyed the music and learned something along the way. By the way, if you are a student from Heritage Woods, the answer to question three was Bass Clarinet.

The band seems to be fine shape, our soloist is sounding amazing and I think that we have enough dinner plates left to make it through the concert. Hope to see you there! 8pm, Evergreen Cultural Centre, Coquitlam, BC.

Perspective

Have you ever been unable to see the forest for the trees? Probably not. You're smarter than I am.

I've been looking at the finer details of Elements as I continue to prepare for our October 18th concert. The last post about math and music is a case in point. It is fascinating to see how a good composer can link so many elements of a work (pardon the pun) together to form a complete piece.

I guess the subconscious mind has been working away during my sleep time. I popped on a recording of Elements on the way in to work this morning and started hearing things that I've never heard before. The third movement really does sound like water! That may sound strange and obvious given that the title of the movement is Water, but I was hearing the whale sounds and slow movement of the current deep below the ocean's surface as I listened. I also have thought that one cabasa stroke at the beginning of the third movement seemed out of place until this morning. There are no other passages for cabasa for miles around, there is almost nothing else happening and BAM! cabasa. Cabasa is typically a hollow metal cylinder with chains around it that fits in ones hand. This morning it was obvious that this was the striking of the match that ignited the fire movement.

At first, I was disappointed in myself for missing these, what are now, obvious things in the piece. The more I thought about it however, the more I realized that this is true of any great piece. You can come at it from many different angles and see or hear many different things. What first catches your attention may distract you from other aspect of the piece and that is OK. That is what makes one persons experience different from the next and allows the piece to become a constant voyage of discovery.

Thanks, Adam!

Math and music (and Gorb)

As a music educator, I am often demonstrating to students the relationship between music and the many other realms of human intelligence. If you read Howard Gardener, he explains that performing music is the only activity that activates all types of intelligence. One of the most commonly heard connections between music and other forms of intelligence is the connection between music and math.

Math relates to music in so many different ways. Music has structure the way a building has structure. One section is built upon another. The piece or building will fall apart without each piece in it's proper place. You feel this in a well composed piece of music when you have the sense that there is no other possible way for the piece to be written. One passage is the logical product of the passage preceding it. A truly great work leaves you with the feeling of constantly rediscovering something that you may have never heard before - that feeling that you get when you might state "Of course! Why didn't I think of that?"

Adam Gorb is a true master of this kind of logic. I find his music to be accessible yet it is always full of surprises. It is accessible, not because he writes with familiar tunes or in a style that is common - often this is far from the truth. But even the most esoteric of his music has a logic to it that makes sense. He uses repetition and melodic and rhythmic themes to hang his form together so that everything makes sense. This is particularly true in "Elements," his percussion concerto. This is not a piece that has a memorable melody, yet I constantly find myself with passages of the piece running through my head. The first measure of the piece presents a very distinct rhythm that is the glue for much of the first movement. It is originally stated in the solo percussion part, but then gets tossed around by the other instruments in the ensemble and is often mixed with many of the other ideas in the movement. In his works, "Dances from Crete" and "Midnight in Buenos Aires," Gorb plays on melodic patterns and rhythms that are stylistically distinct and obvious parts of Greek music and the Tango. It is what he does with these ideas that makes the music exciting and novel.

The more I advance as a musician and continue to learn about all aspects of music, the more I come back to my personal musical roots. As a musician, I am a drummer first and from that, constantly fascinated by rhythm. Rhythm is also extremely closely related to math. The simple quarter note, half note, etc. note names recall fractions as does the time signature that you find at the beginning of a piece. The truth is that these rhythmic fractions and time signatures are a simple expression of the complex numerical relationships of time throughout a piece of music. It is common for a composer to shift between rhythms and time signatures based on the common elements of each. A famous example of this is the relationship between 3/4 time and 6/8. Both time signatures have 6 eighth notes in every measure but where the accents are quite different. If you know the song "America" from West Side Story, you will know this relationship as the rhythm alternates between 6/8 and 3/4. I think that Adam Gorb must have a very strong background and fascination with math because he takes these relationships to a very different and sometimes complex level.

In his piece "Elements," he is constantly shifting time signatures and tempi. There are times when the shifts seem very abrupt, but they always make sense, whether you can figure out what is going on or not. An example of this comes from the first movement where triplets in one section become eighth notes in the next, effectively increasing the tempo by 1/3. It feels as if we suddenly shift gears and speed off (hopefully not leaving anyone in the dust!) In the second movement, the feel is almost as if there is no beat. The music floats and there are often different note groupings that layer on top of each other to create a shimmering texture. They key to this section however is that the pulse, at least amongst the musicians is extremely strong and the beat shifts around a constant eighth note. It is fascinating to study and to hear.

If all of this talk of math gives you hives and scares you, I can empathize. It scares me! Do you need to understand it all to enjoy the piece? No. To go back to the architecture analogy, you can certainly enjoy the look of a beautifully designed and constructed building without a degree in engineering. For some it is the mystery of how art is created that is the magic. For others, the fascination is in pulling it all apart to see how it works.

You will, of course, enjoy all of the pieces mentioned above and more at Evergreen Cultural Centre on October 18th at 8pm. If you're lucky, you will also get the chance to run into the composer of all of this wonderful music, as he will be coming from Manchester, England to hear this extravaganza!