Monday Morning Run

The randomly shuffled playlist from my morning run, which was unfortunately indoors due to the rain:

• You're So Vain, Carly Simon (turns out she was singing about Warren Beatty)
  
• Hot Thing, Prince (awesome atonal sax squalls over drum machines)
  
• The Royal Scam, Steely Dan (as cynical as ever)
  
• Hurricane Eye, Paul Simon (brilliant manipulation of time signatures)
  
• Born at the Right Time, Paul Simon (referencing the story of Moses)
  
• Twist and Crawl, The English Beat (old-school ska at its best)
  
• Life and How to Live It, R.E.M. (takes me back to my first year of teaching)
  
• Rock and Roll, Led Zeppelin (excellent drum fills)
  
• Sajna Ve Sajna, Sunidhi Chauhan (the wildcard in this playlist--Bollywood music from India)
  
• Rock On, David Essex (early 70s pop bliss)
  
• Miss You, The Rolling Stones (mix a blues harp in and disco suddenly becomes hip)
  

Interesting how Mick Jagger sang background vocals on the first song and then lead on the last. A nice rounded form.

Theme and Variations on "Mary Had a Little Lamb"

Theme and variations form has been popular with composers for centuries. The idea is simple: take a well-known melody and come up with new ways to play it, like changing the rhythms, adding notes, going from major to minor, etc. Charles Ives wrote a set of fascinating variations on "My Country Tis of Thee" for organ. Here is the band arrangement of the orchestral version:

Variations On "America" - US M...

Mozart used "Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman," better known to anglophones as "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," as the basis for a virtuosic piano piece:

Variations on Ah, vous dirai-j...

In music theory class, we tried our hand at doing something similar. Here are three variations on "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Enjoy!

Julie and Nick's version


Stuart and Ryan


Kenny and Nathan

Renaissance Music

This quarter, Symphonic Band and Wind Ensemble students have been studying Renaissance music. We have rehearsed modern band pieces based on music of the era, including Court Festival by William Latham (SB) and Four French Dances by Robert Hanson (WE). Earlier this week, we learned about some exotic Renaissance instruments (see the previous post), and then we divided into chamber groups to create our own arrangements of Renaissance dances composed by Tielman Susato. All of the students received the soprano, alto, tenor, and bass parts to three dances, transposed into the proper key. Then, each ensemble was responsible for orchestrating one of the pieces, adding percussion, and applying ornamentation and dynamics. Here are some of our best results. (Click on the arrows to hear the sounds.)

Symphonic Band (clarinet, 2 alto saxophones, trumpet, trombone, euphonium, and percussion)

Wind Ensemble (flute, clarinet, bassoon, tenor saxophone, trumpet, trombone, and percussion)

Wind Ensemble (flute, clarinet, baritone saxophone, trumpet, trombone, and percussion)

Home Sweet Homecoming

Well, it's mid-October, so that means it's Homecoming! The school is all decked out to reflect the Windy City theme, and the Concert Band has created their annual banner, which in my opinion looks great. We are defending champs in the advisory banner contest, so I hope we can hold on to our crown.

On Tuesday night, we had a small group of Warrior Marching Band members form a pep band for our boys varsity soccer team. We cheered them on to a 4-1 victory over our crosstown rivals, the Highland Park Giants. Now we are frantically preparing our halftime show for Friday night. Hopefully it won't be raining non-stop like it did last week. Thank heavens for ponchos! Tomorrow we also have our traditional 8th period march through the halls and the pep rally. I can't wait!

UPDATE: The banner took second place! And, the band did a great job at halftime, in spite of being rained out of several early bird practices and having to perform on the rice paddy that was Adams Field. The team was successful, too, defeating Niles North 26-13 to improve to 5-2 on the season. One more win puts us in the playoffs!

Renaissance Musical Instruments

During the week of October 5 (Homecoming week!), the Symphonic Band and Wind Ensemble will be studying Renaissance music and musical instruments. Here are a few videos to supplement our work in class.

Click here for a USC music professor demonstrating a number of Renaissance instruments, like the recorder, bagpipes, and shawm.

The Crumhorn


The Cornett


The Lute


The Recorder (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass)