Reflection: Wind Symphony Performance 02/29/2024

I’ve sat on my performance for a few days, and now it’s time to share my reflections on my recent performance with the SPC Wind Symphony! Two different groups performed in this concert, but I was only in the second half of the performance, so I’ll only be speaking on that portion.

The pieces we performed that night are as follows:

• Folk Dances by Dmitri Shotsakovich

• Singularity by Eli Fieldsteel

• Movements from Star Wars by John Williams

  • Darth Vader’s Theme

  • Yoda’s Theme

  • Main Theme

There was a theme for the performance this time around, in collaboration with another department from SPC, that being the ethics department. We centered our pieces around the ethics of certain topics; for example, one piece we performed is Singularity by Eli Fieldsteel, which uses live electronics as part of the performance. Our inclusion of this piece brings up the topic of the ethical use of Artificial Intelligence, especially when applied to current day uses. While I have very strong opinions about that, this post isn’t about that! But this gives you the idea that the pieces chosen help bring about the discussion of what makes something ethical or not, or if ethics would even apply to a given topic! Unironically, the Applied Ethics course should be given to all high school students as a required class, but now I’m just getting off topic. To my reflection!

Overall, the performance went very well, especially given that we only had three rehearsals to put together the pieces for performance. The group is comprised mostly of musicians and educators who do music professionally, so it’s hardly a coincidence that it turned out just fine.

The first piece Wind Symphony performed is Folk Dances by Dmitri Shotsakovich. In this piece. I played the Percussion 1 part, comprised of snare drum, tambourine, and the triangle. Due to quick instrument changes, I made the decision to mount the tambourine and just strike the muted head with a snare stick whenever the part came up. There were a few stick changes needed during the first half of the piece, switching one snare stick to a triangle beater to strike the triangle, but still having the other stick ready to hop right back on tambourine! Then I had just eight measures, while playing said tambourine, to switch to a pair of brushes. I chose to do a sort of four mallet grip, keeping the brushes on the inside so I can quickly throw them down when finished to immediately have my snare sticks ready to go for the immediate follow up. The stick changes, ironically, were the trickiest part to manage in this piece. Everything else fell into place just fine.

The second piece, however, was a doozy for percussion. Singularity by Eli Fieldsteel has four percussion parts, plus a timpani part. There were only two percussionists, including myself. A few hours before our final rehearsal, I was requested to look through the parts that weren’t covered and see what I could assign. Surprisingly enough, most of the instruments could be covered by two percussionists, but some rearranging of parts had to happen to make it work. Over the course of the week leading up to the performance, I sorted out all the parts and, with excluding timpani in general, I could split almost every part between just two people! Hmm, maybe I could provide that as a service with such a quick turnaround… I do wish we had sorted it out sooner, though, as there were some missed parts on my end due to the last minute changes. These things happen, though, and with all the parts I did add in, I still covered waaay more than I would have originally. Speaking of the performance itself, it went very well! There was a point in the second movement that felt off, so I opted to watch the conductor and try to reestablish where we were using the bass drum and toms I was playing at the time, and we were able to line back up! Again, though, many of us are professional musicians, so it certainly helps that we could lock back in with each other. Other than that, though, it was pretty much smooth sailing.

The final piece on the program was a few movements from Star Wars by John Williams. I hope I don’t need to explain the themes we did. For Darth Vader’s Theme, I played the snare drum. I recall how I performed it in a more serious manner than I usually do, just because of the nature of the theme. For Yoda’s Theme, I played the vibraphone, and I got to exercise my four mallet block chords for a while, so I got to stretch my chord structure muscles for a bit. As soon as I finished on the vibes, though, I had only four measures to get back to the snare drum for the Main Theme, the final movement of the final piece. I played it well, though I do wish I spent a bit more time ironing out the measure counts, as I got off a measure at one point. Fortunately, it was at a point where I was doing the same thing over and over, so not the largest deal in the world.

With the performance done and dusted, I believe the next performance is actually a choir performance with the Ruth Eckerd Hall Chorus. While I will play some percussion in it, I will primarily be singing as a baritone. It’s been a while since I last performed on vocals, so I’m excited to do something different! Ticket information is not available as of yet, but as soon as it is, I’ll be sure to announce it. Thank you for reading this far, and I’ll see you next time!

~Kyle Collins
NavyBlueCreator