Monday, September 3, 2012

Dance, Hum, and Be Transported!

Dance, Hum, and Be Transported!

When our audience attends our performances, they see and hear the final product that sounds effortless and expressive.  Often times, the battle towards achieving musical expressiveness is never seen by our audience, so let me paint a "sketch" of what our musicians face as we strive for a successful performance.

Paris Sketches features musical ideas that playfully dance around the ensemble like the bohemian characters in the popular movie Moulin Rouge.  These creative motifs will make you hum your favorite tune as the piece develops.  The challenge the musicians face is placing these musical motifs in a volume and interpretation that allow the listener to imagine them in a clear fashion.  Maestro Maguire did a great job describing this goal to the ensemble, and the Desert Winds will depict many great characters with their performance of this piece.



The ensemble will face a different kind of challenge when performing Irish Tune from Country Derry.  In one of my band trips to New York City, I visited Ground Zero in 2005.  The cleanup efforts were still continuing, but there were large pictures of the events that occurred on 9/11 mounted on the fence surrounding Ground Zero.  As I stood in front of a picture describing the collapse of Tower One, a street performer sitting on the pavement began to play the theme of Irish Tune, "Danny Boy", on his flute.  Tears could not stop flowing from my eyes as I began to think of the lives that were affected that day, and even though the composer, Percy Grainger, never intended to write this for an event like 9/11, the sweet melody transports your mind to the deep emotions of your soul.  For the musicians of the Desert Winds, the challenge will be to reach within our individual emotions and use our instrument as an expressive tool that will move our audience to memories deep in their hearts.

Arabesque is a piece that will make you get on your feet and dance!  Like Shakira's articulate hip moves, the moving and precise musical lines in this piece will pose a fun challenge for the woodwind section.  The section leaders of the woodwind sections have set sectional schedules and online guides as how to play these passages.  I know many metronomes and metronome apps will be used to help each musician perform these passages consistently accurate.  At our performance, this showcase of technical mastery will look controlled and effortless and will help showcase the powerful and energetic brass and percussion features.

The personal challenges the musicians encounter at each concert are ongoing, but we know they are worth it when we hear our audience members humming a tune, dancing on their seats, or discussing a piece that transported them to a memory they cherish.  

We hope you dance, hum, and are transported at our first concert!  See you in October!

Monica Guido
Education Advisor
The Desert Winds
www.thedesertwinds.org
facebook.com/thedesertwinds