I'll back up. In the summer of 2013, the Urbana Pops Orchestra announced a composition contest. They did this the year before, I had submitted something, but it was pretty terrible. Not surprisingly, I didn't win. However, this time I was ready. I had started to work on my original idea from the previous summer again, and it was sounding alright, still not too good. I worked for three weeks straight on that thing and submitted it at the end of January. I waited for months for a response. Then, in mid-April, I ran into one of the conductors of the orchestra at Za's, of all places. We chatted a little bit, he and his family had been friends of ours for a few years, and then he said that they had selected a winner for the competition, and would love to play my piece. I thanked him profusely, and was super, annoyingly giddy for a few days afterwards. After this, I got in touch with the guy who judged the composition, a professor at Colombia College in Chicago for "Music of the Screen." He gave me comments on the piece and I took pretty much everything he said to heart. I really, really wanted this thing to be good.
What happened from that time to the performance was kind of a blur. I was actually in the orchestra who was playing my piece, back in the percussion section, but I had asked to not play during it. There were more qualified percussionists to play my piece back there than myself. We were playing some really great music during that concert. After the first rehearsal, I sat back and thought about this. My piece had a certain "Americana" quality to it, and that really clashed with the rest of the program, which featured some like this (like John Williams' "Jurassic Park", "Raiders of the Lost Ark") but others (like Saint-Seans "Bacchanale," look it up) that did not. I tried to shrug off this feeling and focus on my playing and not as much on my piece; it was kind of out of my hands at this point.
The night of the concert came way too quickly. Naturally, as they do, my entire extended family came. When we got to the venue, I started to freak out just a little bit. Not too much, I kept to myself, but I was sweating, trembling, going overall insane. I played on highlights from "Jurassic Park" (which, by the way, is an amazing piece, one of my favorites, and frankly scared me so bad to have played before mine) and went down into the audience. It was really hard to sit there and enjoy it. I was still in semi-freakout mode, and this was all a little much. But I eventually calmed myself down. I listened. They were doing a really fantastic job. I was so glad that I had pushed myself and taken the time to get this done, revise it, submit it, and be there for it.
This preceded the first camp I went to by about a week, and when I showed up at Blue Lake, the euphoria was still there. I was ready to learn from one of Tchaikovsky's most majestic works (his fourth symphony) on how to improve at what I do.
If you want to listen to it, here's a link to the performance of my piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUwnlojYgKk
What happened from that time to the performance was kind of a blur. I was actually in the orchestra who was playing my piece, back in the percussion section, but I had asked to not play during it. There were more qualified percussionists to play my piece back there than myself. We were playing some really great music during that concert. After the first rehearsal, I sat back and thought about this. My piece had a certain "Americana" quality to it, and that really clashed with the rest of the program, which featured some like this (like John Williams' "Jurassic Park", "Raiders of the Lost Ark") but others (like Saint-Seans "Bacchanale," look it up) that did not. I tried to shrug off this feeling and focus on my playing and not as much on my piece; it was kind of out of my hands at this point.
The night of the concert came way too quickly. Naturally, as they do, my entire extended family came. When we got to the venue, I started to freak out just a little bit. Not too much, I kept to myself, but I was sweating, trembling, going overall insane. I played on highlights from "Jurassic Park" (which, by the way, is an amazing piece, one of my favorites, and frankly scared me so bad to have played before mine) and went down into the audience. It was really hard to sit there and enjoy it. I was still in semi-freakout mode, and this was all a little much. But I eventually calmed myself down. I listened. They were doing a really fantastic job. I was so glad that I had pushed myself and taken the time to get this done, revise it, submit it, and be there for it.
This preceded the first camp I went to by about a week, and when I showed up at Blue Lake, the euphoria was still there. I was ready to learn from one of Tchaikovsky's most majestic works (his fourth symphony) on how to improve at what I do.
If you want to listen to it, here's a link to the performance of my piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUwnlojYgKk
Wow, what an honor to have the Urbana Pops perform your piece! I look forward to watching the performance some time when I'm not in a quiet work space.
ReplyDeleteWow! That really sounds like a lot of fun! I listened to the piece, and I really liked it. It seems like you put a lot of effort into this piece, and it's good that it was able to pay off when it was selected to be played by the Urbana Pops!
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