Edited the next morning to clarify a few points.

I did it again. Bought a clarinet on eBay. I can't possibly pretend I need another one -- I have three soprano clarinets already, and I've only used one of them the past several months. This one I bought pretty much out of curiosity. It's a Mazzeo system clarinet; I've never seen one in the ( Read more... )

At last night's concert I was the third clarinet section. Jeff was the second clarinet section ( Read more... )

Last Tuesday the band played in Apulia Station. Program A, but with "Triple B Rag" instead of "Fortress". Heather and Kenny attended. I played the Ridenour clarinet, which seemed to work fine.

This afternoon the Binghamton Morris Men dance in Binghamton, for once -- a couple of nursing homes, I think.

So we played indoors again, in a church in South Onondaga, in a space more suited to a woodwind quintet than a band. We didn't outnumber the audience by much ( Read more... )

I've played my first performance with the LaFayette (NY) Concert Band. For three months we've been rehearsing a folder full of music; on Monday morning we played... none of it. We sat alongside the route of the LaFayette Memorial Day parade and sight-read marches. Without a conductor -- he was sitting back in the trumpet section. His main ( Read more... )

Here's what the LaFayette Concert Band will be playing and when. (More or less. Some dates are still uncertain, and I'm sort of guessing which date has which program. Also, there will be revisions to the programs.)
DateTimePlaceProgramNotes Mon 28 May9:00 amLaFayetteMarchesMemorial Day parade. We sit and play music, they march past us. All ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

( Prologue: 1995 )

Following up on a story Goolge News found for me, here's the Main Squeeze Orchestra: the fulfillment of one man's dream to conduct an all-woman, all-accordion orchestra.

Edmund Welles is not alone: here's another bass clarinet quartet. Their site's a little outdated; maybe they don't exist any more.

(There was also the World's Largest Bass ( Read more... )

This looks like an interesting band: "Hazmat Modine draws from the rich soil of American music of the 20's and 30's through to the 50’s and early 60’s, blending elements of early Blues, Hokum Jugband, Swing, Klezmer, New Orleans R & B, and Jamaican Rocksteady." The instrumentation starts off with harmonica, guitar, and percussion; adds trumpet, ( Read more... )