On Religion

Building a Community at Facebook

“The body is a community made up of its innumerable cells or inhabitants.” ~ Thomas A. Edison

I often think of the bands I’m in as family away from home. It is so comfortable gathering together, getting our stuff out, and then communing through the common goal of creating great music.

If you are a member of a group, be it a band, a reading club, or a dog walking community, you can easily create a group on Facebook. Since so many of our family and friends are on Facebook, this can be used to announce activities, plan new things to do, and converse about things that we are passionate about.

Woodinville Community Band plays de Meij’s Lord of the Rings

“A live concert to me is exciting because of all the electricity that is generated in the crowd and on stage. It’s my favorite part of the business, live concerts.” ~ Elvis Presley

The Woodinville Community Band is my all time favorite community band. It has a world-class director, very focused and passionate band members and board, and plays some very cool music. This year we will be tilting our lance at the Johan de Meij Symphony No. 1, Lord of the Rings for concert wind band.

“Johan de Meij (Voorburg, 1953) studied trombone and conducting at the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague. He has earned international fame as a composer and arranger. His catalogue consists of original compositions, symphonic transcriptions and arrangements of film scores and musicals. This Symphony is based on Tolkien’s best-selling novels of the same name, was his first composition for wind orchestra.

It received the prestigious Sudler Composition Award in 1989. In 2001, the orchestral version was premiered by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. The Lord of the Rings has been recorded by renowned orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the North Netherlands Orchestra, the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra and the Amsterdam Wind Orchestra.” ~ Wikipedia

If it has been a while since you have been to a live concert, come support local community music and prepared to be surprised at the quality and intensity that this concert will present.

Chive On

“Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.” ~  Lois Wyse

I’ve heard it said that the male of the human species are very visual creatures. For example, if you look at the statistics for the magazine that most men will buy, I think you will find things like Playboy, Penthouse, and the like. The market for a man’s money is filled with traps associated with this passion. Scantily clad women can be used to sell men almost anything from a fast car to a can of beer.

I’m not going to apologize for my luv of the subtle curve of a woman’s lip, the affection have have for nice breasts, big and large, or the way a sexy woman’s walk can derail my train of thought. I suspect I’m hard wired to appreciate these things.

One recent discovery was a web site for men called the Chive. It is full of photographs, many of which are donated. Some are topical, ironic, and humorous. But most are electric with that certain sexiness that attracts men.

I site isn’t optimized for speed. I’m not sure if it just because it’s running on a 365 under someone’s dinner table in Georgia or if the site is just poorly designed. But with a decent ISP, maybe one that provides FiOS, you won’t have too much trouble getting today’s dose of overkill.

    

Don’t say I never gave you anything. Enjoy.

From my Bucket List: Small Ensemble Musings

“As good as I am, I’m nothing without my band.” ~ Steven Tyler

I was thinking about some of the things on my bucket list, most of them job, family and music related. I am not brave enough to share my list, but I do often talk about some of the things on the list. This blog post is where I attempt to wax poetic about the music things I’ve done in the last ten years.

One of the first groups I established was the Dissonance. It was a 4-horn band playing jazz standards. Having returned to music performance after a ~30 break, I went about taking lessons, buying music, amps, and such. Eventually we even got a world-class vocalist to join the group.

I was fortunately enough to attract some really talented friends to join the group. We played 6 to 8 gigs a year and practiced every other week. These were heady times.

About 4 years ago I started up a sax quartet that gigs 4 to 5 times a year and practices two to three times before the gig. Once again I was able to entice some really good players to sit in. Don’t get me wrong, the players have changed over the years. But a lot of really good players don’t mind sitting in with a group where the music, events, and practices are all taken care of by someone else.

For the last seven years or so I have run the Microsoft Jumpin’ Jive Orchestra (was Microsoft Jazz Band). This has been the most enjoyable, most time consuming project of all. Imagine getting 20 people to show up every week for practice, finding music that is interesting to the audience and challenging to the players, and schlepping all the gear around.

I have some thoughts that run through my mind that I thought I’d share with my gentle readers. These are not presented in any order or precedence. And they come to you from a hobbyist, who although plays in paid gigs every year, has never been in a musician’s union and will never make any money running these groups. It truly is a labor of love. You can hear (probably way too many) videos of the various groups on my YouTube Gandalfe’s Channel.

1. What ever music ensemble you want to put together, picking the performers will be the one of the most challenging part of the operation.

a. Sometimes the best player is not a team fit. There will those who love to play who want to just show up for one practice and the gig. With sadness and firmness, I have to let these folks walk. Most of them have more playing opportunities then they can handle.

b. Then there are the folks who who show up for every practice, but never get their parts down. It is pretty easy to see that they aren’t practicing. Too many of these players and the good players will leave.

c. Sometimes a great player will leave for no apparent reason. Always take the time to determine why this happened. This is a people game; you live and die by the people who are passionate about your project. When they leave, it’s time to take stock of what’s going on. Sometimes they will tell you what precipitated the exodus; most times they will not.

d. Don’t get to emotionally attached to one player. This is a group, and as such, no one person should have undue influence.

2. Be open to change. Everyone has a favorite song, genre or instrumentation. But if the group wants to try something new, the leader has to be flexible enough to give it a go.

a. I’m a Basie guy. But most of our audiences can only take so much Basie. Sigh… I just need to be happy with 2 or 3 Basie numbers a concert.

b. If someone brings a number to try, no matter how out there it is, try to give a read. Usually the band will agree with you and the song will not make it.

3. Get gigs for the group. Just having a practice session might be fine for some people, but the best players need to perform. That’s where the growth is. I try to make as many of them for pay as possible, even if it is $20 a player.

4. For a hobbyist there is no money in music performance. Keep your day job. But enjoy, no revile in chances to perform publicly.

I started all these groups so that I could perform. Now I sub for another band regularly, have a regular 6-day theater run of a USO band every year, and fill the rest of my dance card with time in the Woodinville Community Band.

I hear so many musicians say that they only play alone at home. I can’t relate. To me, being a musician is more about the people and group ensembles. Practicing by myself, although necessary, is not where I want to spend all of my time. I truly understand that it takes certain skill group to run an organization, let alone a music ensemble. But maybe some of my musing will be start of another great group.

My kind of music, Jazz is

“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.” ~ Abraham Maslow

With my new job and extended commute, I am practicing less. I need to get my head together and get to that happy place where work, play, and family are in all in that happy place. It wouldn’t be so stressful if I wasn’t so hard on myself. I want to do so much more than I am right now, but I feel like I’m just eekin’ by.

No worries though, this feeling seems to hit me every 20 years or so. It it me when I was transitioning from college to the military. It came back again when 20 years later I was transitioning to work at Microsoft. And now twenty years later, I’m at it again with Amazon.

Fortunately I am surrounded by great family, friends and musicians. This too will pass. So enjoy the music.

Silver Eagle Alto Sax by Verne Q Powell

My friend Helen blogged about this redesign of the classic sax today and I had to share the tasty YouTubeage of this redesigned saxophone.

From the Internet we find this article: Two factories helping people get back to work in Elkhart County:

NAPPANEE — Lee Loper was talking about changes to the passenger bus industry but his words echoed the lesson Elkhart County has learned in hard economic times.

“You can’t rely on what you’ve done in the past to prepare you for the future because our world changes every year, as we can see,” he said.

Loper is vice president and general manager of the Nappanee Bus Refurbishment Center. As a joint venture between ABC Companies and Greyhound Lines Inc., the center, located on South Oakland Avenue, is a new business created to fill an emerging need in an established industry.

Buses have been moving through the refurbishing line for weeks but Wednesday morning, the plant took time to celebrate its grand opening.

Coincidentally, several miles to the north in Elkhart, Blessing music company officially opened its new factory Wednesday evening and unveiled a bold strategy to grow its brand by becoming the only U.S. manufacturer making saxophones.

Both ABC Companies and Blessing, one new company and one established company, represent Elkhart County taking a few small steps from its reputation as the recreational vehicle capital and diversifying into different markets.

“It allows us to have and maintain the tradition and heritage of what we’re good at and to continue to grow and expand it,” said Dorinda Heiden-Guss, president of the Economic Development Corp. of Elkhart County.

OLD TO NEW

At the Nappanee Bus Refurbishment Center, Greyhound motorcoaches limp into the facility with upwards of a million miles on them and, after a swing through 25 work stations, roll out of the factory sporting a blue paint scheme and amenities like Wi-Fi, power plug-ins next to the seats and extra leg room.

“It’s not true production,” Loper said. “It’s more a combination and a mesh of production and repair.”

Cost is the prime motivation behind the project. Loper was reluctant to give exact figures but he noted a new motorcoach can cost $450,000 and one can be refurbished for about a third of that price.

Consequently, keeping costs low along with meeting production goals are the keys to making the endeavor viable, Loper said. ABC is partnering with Greyhound to revitalize 250 buses over about a five-year period. It is also exploring some other work that could be done in Nappanee.

The plant has a payroll of 100 employees and another 20 are expected to be hired in another month.

Nappanee Mayor Larry Thompson said the small companies like the refurbishing center are helping the county recover but the bigger projects, like the electric vehicle makers Navistar and Think, will provide the real boost to the local economy.

“If we can put this all together, then we’re going to be back,” Thompson said. “But we’re a ways off. Some of those larger companies…they need to do what they’ve told us they’ll do and that’s hire people and put them to work at a good wage.”

A RETURN

With 50 percent of the worldwide demand for saxophones coming from the United States, Steven Wasser, owner of Blessing, sees a business opportunity. A prototype is scheduled to be ready by January and production is targeted to start in the spring.

  

The woodwind instrument will be built alongside the brass horns in Blessing’s new plant. It is Wasser’s plan to fill the large Elkhart facility with a full line of production.

“This is a musical instrument factory,” he explained. “It is not a brass instrument factory…. We do not feel restricted to the traditional trumpet, trombone, marching brass. Part of our vision for the future is to make excellent wind instruments here.”

Mayor Dick Moore thanked the company for keeping its business in the band instrument capital of the world and applauded the company’s expansion.

“What is good for Blessing,” he said, “is good for Elkhart.

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