Winter Music Concert: Winterlude, At Thornhill United Church

On Monday December 11th, 2017, the Thornhill Music Department hosted its annual Winter Music Concert: Winterlude, at Thornhill United Church. As a member of the Senior Symphonic Wind Ensemble, I performed three songs with the band: The Incredibles by Michael Giacchino and arranged by Baul Murtha, Of Still Meadows and Mountains Bold by Carl Fagan, and Pirates of the Caribbean by Klaus Badel. Our band had been preparing these three songs for the majority of the first semester at after school repertoire classes on wednesdays. This year, we had a special guest band from Glen Shields Public School join our concert. In addition to their performance, many other ensembles from Thornhill Secondary School performed as well. In this reflection, I will
This was the song we had been practicing for the longest time. Due to our familiarity with this piece, our practice leading up to the concert mostly focused on our two other songs. Although it sounded great, or band resultantly neglected some important elements of music as we played that evening. While I was listening to the recording of our band, I noticed that several areas in the music lacked the dynamic expressions written. For example, the clarinets did not emphasize the forte-pianos at bars 3 and 48. In addition, the crescendo at bar 12 was, for the most part, ignored. For the whole band I think we can improve our dynamics by playing softer, so changes in volume can be better heard. Since this is such an exciting piece, it is very easy for us to get lost in the music and throw all dynamic variation out the window. More specifically, if we all played softer at bars 28-30, there would be a greater impact from the crescendo at bar 31. One positive for this song was the great saxophone solo at bar 28-32. The blend during these bars was also well done, since other sections were playing softer, allowing the saxophones to take control of the melody. For the clarinets, one positive was our articulation at bars 7-13 and 19-28. The clear articulation played allowed us to contribute to the build up of the song’s intensity. I think a next step for this song would be to listen to a recording of our playing so we can
Although this song is my favourite out of the three we played, I also believe that we played it the worst; this song still could use a lot of improvements. However, some key positive points of this song included the clarinets’ strong articulation at bars 9-17 and the good support from the base section at bar 27. This kept the band on track and was a good use of blend. There are many improvements that need to be made to this piece. FIrstly, in the introduction, the flutes came in off tempo and it took a few bars for the whole back to come back in sync. This resulted in a very sloppy sounding introduction. Then, at bar 11, when the flutes took control of the melody, they also sped up the tempo a lot, dragging the rest of the band with them. At bars 56-59, the clarinet section needs to improve its articulation. Especially since this is a very loud section that can be heard clearly by the audience, playing the correct articulation will ensure it sounds clean. In general, the band needs to look out more for which section has the melody. For example, at bar 99, when the flute section had the melody, they could barely be heard since they were being overpowered by other sections. I think that in order to improve our playing for this song, we need to practice at a slower tempo, and with a metronome. This will allow us to focus on elements of music such as dynamics, timbre, and articulation. As well, it will allow us