Mr. C's solo contest 2019
Now that a week has passed, hopefully things have condensed enough that this won't be super-long.
Yep, back in the saddle. This is the contest I didn't do last year because weather canceled it...although I still showed up, oops. Oh well. Learning experience. Thankfully the weather this year was decent, and now that the contest is two weeks later than it had been, I got to see a definite change in the sky just while waiting for my car to warm up. I'd set a goal to leave between 6:15 and 6:30; I got out of the house at 6:18 and was driving by 6:29. While I sat in my car waiting for it to defrost, the sky noticeably brightened. I was pretty impressed by that. Spring, you are coming, and nobody can tell me otherwise.
There were cars in the parking lot when I got there! Hooray! I quickly found Mr. C, Mrs. S, and Mr. M in the teachers' lounge, soon joined by Mr. D and Mrs. B, the last judge. I figured Mrs. S was another judge until she said she was going to make the rounds, and I quickly realized that what had been discussed at the contest two years ago had come true--she was Mr. C's assistant again, poised to take over when he retires in the next year or two. I would ask her later how she liked it, and she got this look on her face like she'd really missed it and this was where she belonged. Good. Also, there'd been a comment shortly after I got there, discussing a boy named Z and his attire--he was wearing a full-on suit, and Mrs. S said, that's so him. I know this boy from camp, and yeah, it's totally him--and I was surprised she knew that, too. (This is the boy who'd switched from flute to bari sax at the last camp, and had a science experiment going on in his mouthpiece. He was already memorable, but that cemented things.)
Mr. C is down to just two schools, and Mr. D just one. With declining enrollment, that meant there were just three judges total--there were five just a few years ago--and rarely did we have a full room of five or six kids. I know that one of the schools, where another band director had taught (and the rest of us taught years ago), in Deerfield, closed after last school year. I don't know whatever happened to that director and it didn't come up, but right there is one whole school no longer participating.
I got a bunch of younger kids, but if they were 6th grade or older and had been to camp, chances are they'd know me. One clarinet player, A, who's an 8th grader, broke into a big smile when she saw me. Another girl, S, asked the school secretary who I was after her solo; she'd been a 4th grade flute player at the last camp. There were definitely a few people I recognized, plus I knew all four score sheet runners. Camp dad Mr. D had both daughters as runners, plus the former Creepy Dad and his wife were there with their daughter. The fourth was the middle sister of a family long associated with camp; I completely blanked on her name for a bit and thought she was one of her younger sisters (twins), oops. Plus she was wearing a sweatshirt from her high school, which happens to have the same initials as the school we were in, so I was like, when did this school get a gymnastics team? Oops. I was talking to Creepy Dad and his wife afterward (he'd definitely gotten better--less creepy--after that first year of camp, so I'm hoping somebody said something to him) and they asked how I was doing after camp got canceled. What can I say; it was weird not going, but I survived. There had been some changeover at this school and I found out a longtime second grade teacher, parent to one of my students (and I'd been in her room for contest a couple times), no longer taught there. That was a shock. They'd wanted her to teach somewhere else in the school and she didn't want to do that, as it would take her away from a regular classroom. I guess she's now teaching in a Lutheran school. (For the record, I ended up in the art room this year; the school secretary chose to use non-regular classrooms to make setup easier.) I also found out after lunch--Mr. C kept me after and talked to me for five minutes before resuming with judging--that this school tried to redo how he taught band. He was willing to adjust schedules and stuff to match up with regular class schedules, but the admins didn't want to pull the junior high kids out during class, something like that. Well, a particular person ended up going to a seminar led by none other than Mr. C's former student, who'd been a principal and is now with a university, who said, not only am I familiar with Mr. C's system, I lived it, and there's a reason it works. He got to keep doing what he's been doing. Haha, yes, now I know why she's his favorite alum. :) (I broke her daughter the last night of camp, so, yeah...she can be the favorite.)
Solos! Oh, the solos. I had some really good ones. Mr. C has a flute player at that school who has the possibility of being a monster player--if only he fixes his tone. He's extremely airy, like there's a buzz permeating everything he plays. That's quite possibly the only thing I dinged him for, too, because it was that strong that I couldn't ignore it. But I said, if you don't already, I strongly suggest you take private lessons. He has tremendous potential. A couple of the older reed players picked difficult solos and mostly did well with them. Mr. C had given them a choice on what to play and many of them opted to go difficult, and they did pretty well. At the Buffalo Grove school, they'd missed two of the past three lessons due to weather, so we were asked to give them a bit of leeway. The thing to know is that the good kids will still practice, the bad ones won't, and ultimately I'm not sure it matters. I recall having two sax players, a year apart, and the younger one greatly outplayed the older one. Another sax player needs to learn how scales work. I actually stopped him because he was looking at his music while playing, and I asked, are you playing a scale or your music (and thinking in my head, because what's coming out of your horn corresponds with neither...)? He went, my scale. Okay, start over. And he played this disjointed muddle of notes again. Seriously. The first four notes were fine, and then they started jumping around...and I think this was a kid who didn't know anything other than one scale. And he was a seventh grader! Come on! Mr. D also said I'd given one of his kids a gift by giving him a II. Well, he's a fourth grader, so this is his first solo, and I'm quite certain I gave him a very low II. It's not like he was a point away from a I. But this child has no sense of pitch. He's just blowing into his trumpet. And I admitted at lunch that I wasn't quite sure how to score him, because there were a couple places where he was fine, but you can't take off points for the same thing in different areas, and I definitely set his score sheet aside and puzzled over it for a minute after the kids left. I mean, sometimes that's it. But Mr. D must have thought I should have given him a III. It would have been different if it wasn't a beginner. Second-year player? Absolutely. But yeah. I was kind of stuck. So those are the kids who stuck out to me; the rest were pretty general, and luckily most of them did pretty okay, low Is and high IIs.
We stayed at school for a bit afterward, then Mr. C, Mrs. S, Mr. M, and I went to Fox and Hound for a while afterward. Oh, the stories. We got onto weird food for a bit, some of it ethnic (lutefisk, duck's blood soup), some of it more Andrew Zimmern-ish. Turns out Mrs. S had a van tale of her own; that seems to be a commonality with women I know. She was also surprised to hear that I'm 41; she joked, my kids think I'm 43! (She's about 7 years older than me.) I went, I've never seen your driver's license, I won't say otherwise. (But it has been 15 years since I taught, so...yeah.) We'd also had a couple fun stories during lunch that I've shared with fellow musicians this week:
--Mrs. S talked about a clarinet that seemed to have odd proportions. Something wasn't quite right. Turned out it was a rental, and the family was behind on payments, and the clarinet had a problem. Rather than contacting the music store (since again, they owed money), mom tried to fix it by putting it in the dishwasher...and it shrank. Oops.
--Mr. C said his one school used to do parades, and in one parade the band was at parade rest. A particular trombone player didn't put his slide lock on, and happened to be standing over a sewer grate, and...down went the slide. The player was all, what do I do?! Mr. C said, you fake it! I don't have a spare slide! I just keep wondering what the other people thought when they looked down and saw a trombone slide in the sewer, heh.
It was really nice to see everyone, and I missed doing that contest. Mr. M and I even talked between groups and I mentioned my upcoming concert (today), and he said to email him the details as he'd try to come. Given that it's been snowing all morning, I won't fault him if he doesn't, but it would be great if he came out.
Yep, back in the saddle. This is the contest I didn't do last year because weather canceled it...although I still showed up, oops. Oh well. Learning experience. Thankfully the weather this year was decent, and now that the contest is two weeks later than it had been, I got to see a definite change in the sky just while waiting for my car to warm up. I'd set a goal to leave between 6:15 and 6:30; I got out of the house at 6:18 and was driving by 6:29. While I sat in my car waiting for it to defrost, the sky noticeably brightened. I was pretty impressed by that. Spring, you are coming, and nobody can tell me otherwise.
There were cars in the parking lot when I got there! Hooray! I quickly found Mr. C, Mrs. S, and Mr. M in the teachers' lounge, soon joined by Mr. D and Mrs. B, the last judge. I figured Mrs. S was another judge until she said she was going to make the rounds, and I quickly realized that what had been discussed at the contest two years ago had come true--she was Mr. C's assistant again, poised to take over when he retires in the next year or two. I would ask her later how she liked it, and she got this look on her face like she'd really missed it and this was where she belonged. Good. Also, there'd been a comment shortly after I got there, discussing a boy named Z and his attire--he was wearing a full-on suit, and Mrs. S said, that's so him. I know this boy from camp, and yeah, it's totally him--and I was surprised she knew that, too. (This is the boy who'd switched from flute to bari sax at the last camp, and had a science experiment going on in his mouthpiece. He was already memorable, but that cemented things.)
Mr. C is down to just two schools, and Mr. D just one. With declining enrollment, that meant there were just three judges total--there were five just a few years ago--and rarely did we have a full room of five or six kids. I know that one of the schools, where another band director had taught (and the rest of us taught years ago), in Deerfield, closed after last school year. I don't know whatever happened to that director and it didn't come up, but right there is one whole school no longer participating.
I got a bunch of younger kids, but if they were 6th grade or older and had been to camp, chances are they'd know me. One clarinet player, A, who's an 8th grader, broke into a big smile when she saw me. Another girl, S, asked the school secretary who I was after her solo; she'd been a 4th grade flute player at the last camp. There were definitely a few people I recognized, plus I knew all four score sheet runners. Camp dad Mr. D had both daughters as runners, plus the former Creepy Dad and his wife were there with their daughter. The fourth was the middle sister of a family long associated with camp; I completely blanked on her name for a bit and thought she was one of her younger sisters (twins), oops. Plus she was wearing a sweatshirt from her high school, which happens to have the same initials as the school we were in, so I was like, when did this school get a gymnastics team? Oops. I was talking to Creepy Dad and his wife afterward (he'd definitely gotten better--less creepy--after that first year of camp, so I'm hoping somebody said something to him) and they asked how I was doing after camp got canceled. What can I say; it was weird not going, but I survived. There had been some changeover at this school and I found out a longtime second grade teacher, parent to one of my students (and I'd been in her room for contest a couple times), no longer taught there. That was a shock. They'd wanted her to teach somewhere else in the school and she didn't want to do that, as it would take her away from a regular classroom. I guess she's now teaching in a Lutheran school. (For the record, I ended up in the art room this year; the school secretary chose to use non-regular classrooms to make setup easier.) I also found out after lunch--Mr. C kept me after and talked to me for five minutes before resuming with judging--that this school tried to redo how he taught band. He was willing to adjust schedules and stuff to match up with regular class schedules, but the admins didn't want to pull the junior high kids out during class, something like that. Well, a particular person ended up going to a seminar led by none other than Mr. C's former student, who'd been a principal and is now with a university, who said, not only am I familiar with Mr. C's system, I lived it, and there's a reason it works. He got to keep doing what he's been doing. Haha, yes, now I know why she's his favorite alum. :) (I broke her daughter the last night of camp, so, yeah...she can be the favorite.)
Solos! Oh, the solos. I had some really good ones. Mr. C has a flute player at that school who has the possibility of being a monster player--if only he fixes his tone. He's extremely airy, like there's a buzz permeating everything he plays. That's quite possibly the only thing I dinged him for, too, because it was that strong that I couldn't ignore it. But I said, if you don't already, I strongly suggest you take private lessons. He has tremendous potential. A couple of the older reed players picked difficult solos and mostly did well with them. Mr. C had given them a choice on what to play and many of them opted to go difficult, and they did pretty well. At the Buffalo Grove school, they'd missed two of the past three lessons due to weather, so we were asked to give them a bit of leeway. The thing to know is that the good kids will still practice, the bad ones won't, and ultimately I'm not sure it matters. I recall having two sax players, a year apart, and the younger one greatly outplayed the older one. Another sax player needs to learn how scales work. I actually stopped him because he was looking at his music while playing, and I asked, are you playing a scale or your music (and thinking in my head, because what's coming out of your horn corresponds with neither...)? He went, my scale. Okay, start over. And he played this disjointed muddle of notes again. Seriously. The first four notes were fine, and then they started jumping around...and I think this was a kid who didn't know anything other than one scale. And he was a seventh grader! Come on! Mr. D also said I'd given one of his kids a gift by giving him a II. Well, he's a fourth grader, so this is his first solo, and I'm quite certain I gave him a very low II. It's not like he was a point away from a I. But this child has no sense of pitch. He's just blowing into his trumpet. And I admitted at lunch that I wasn't quite sure how to score him, because there were a couple places where he was fine, but you can't take off points for the same thing in different areas, and I definitely set his score sheet aside and puzzled over it for a minute after the kids left. I mean, sometimes that's it. But Mr. D must have thought I should have given him a III. It would have been different if it wasn't a beginner. Second-year player? Absolutely. But yeah. I was kind of stuck. So those are the kids who stuck out to me; the rest were pretty general, and luckily most of them did pretty okay, low Is and high IIs.
We stayed at school for a bit afterward, then Mr. C, Mrs. S, Mr. M, and I went to Fox and Hound for a while afterward. Oh, the stories. We got onto weird food for a bit, some of it ethnic (lutefisk, duck's blood soup), some of it more Andrew Zimmern-ish. Turns out Mrs. S had a van tale of her own; that seems to be a commonality with women I know. She was also surprised to hear that I'm 41; she joked, my kids think I'm 43! (She's about 7 years older than me.) I went, I've never seen your driver's license, I won't say otherwise. (But it has been 15 years since I taught, so...yeah.) We'd also had a couple fun stories during lunch that I've shared with fellow musicians this week:
--Mrs. S talked about a clarinet that seemed to have odd proportions. Something wasn't quite right. Turned out it was a rental, and the family was behind on payments, and the clarinet had a problem. Rather than contacting the music store (since again, they owed money), mom tried to fix it by putting it in the dishwasher...and it shrank. Oops.
--Mr. C said his one school used to do parades, and in one parade the band was at parade rest. A particular trombone player didn't put his slide lock on, and happened to be standing over a sewer grate, and...down went the slide. The player was all, what do I do?! Mr. C said, you fake it! I don't have a spare slide! I just keep wondering what the other people thought when they looked down and saw a trombone slide in the sewer, heh.
It was really nice to see everyone, and I missed doing that contest. Mr. M and I even talked between groups and I mentioned my upcoming concert (today), and he said to email him the details as he'd try to come. Given that it's been snowing all morning, I won't fault him if he doesn't, but it would be great if he came out.