Do You Know Brenda?

Another CMU trip is behind us now. Yesterday we went there to see Em in the Honor's Band concert and to bring her and Alex home. The concert was fantastic, it's always amazing to see a group of high school students get together after, probably, never meeting before and with just 7 hours of practice, put on such a wonderful concert! I say 'probably' never meeting before because some of them have actually met before during CMU sumer band camp. The first half of the concert was actually CMU students, they put on 4 different ensembles...a duo, a trio, and 2 quartets. I LOVED the xylephone duo and the trombone trio, the low brass quartet was very good also....but....the saxaphone quartet left me no feeling so happy....they played some contemporary piece called "Four for Tango"...there was a lot of squeaking and squawking by the soprano sax and a lot of tongue/mouthpiece clacking going on with the tenor and altos...*shudder*...it makes me sad to not like it because in general, the music was pretty good until they ruined it with all the extras....sad. The Honor's band played 4 pieces; "Shortcut Home" by Dana Wilson, "The Match of Hope" by Nachman Yariv (highly enjoyable), "March of the Belgian Parachutists" by Pieter Leemans, and "First Suite in Eb" *Chaconne, Intermezzo, March* by Gustav Holst (HIGHLY, highly enjoyable!!) I was very familiar with "March of the Belgian Parachutists" having heard it before, only being Paratroopers instead of Parachutists...our band here has played it a few times. Again, they did incredible!

One thing I forgot to mention was the obsession a section of the CMU band has with "Brenda". As we walked around CMU on Friday, "Do you know Brenda" and "DYKB" was written on the sidewalks EVERYWHERE! (in chalk...no vandelism) It was actually quite amusing and made for a lot of conversation through the day....I guess they even sing Happy Birthday to Brenda. So....Do you know Brenda???

Oh yes....MORE band info....PROUD parental_unit am I! My eldest child_unit informed me that he received the "Rookie of the Year" for the trombone section in the marching band, he told me that it was a very large trophy that he has to hold on to until next year when he passes it on to the next rookie of the year. Yes Ben, I will display it for you proudly for this next year! I was kind of thinking, if it's that big, we could tie it to the roof of the truck and drive around town to show it off, what do ya think, eh? heh.

It snowed here on Saturday night...quite a bit too, which was very surprising! A lot of it has melted now because it's been raining all day, but don't fear, it's going to snow again on Thanksgiving....great...just in time for us to drive up north for dinner with my ma. Never fails!

I must go now, I have a birthday cake to deliver.

Y'all get your cozy boots out, you're gonna need 'em,
Love Ya :)