Well, I failed.

I promised to keep everyone updated on our trip to Oneonta for our concert at the New York Summer Music Festival (NYSMF), but I did not.

Don’t hold it against me… I am only a Horn player after all.  We are a well meaning breed.  But, sometimes, events conspire to bring us down.  Sometimes,  we see something shiny and … SQUIRREL!

What was I saying??   Oh never mind…  Here’s a brief recap of our adventure into the Northern lands of this fine United States.  Our adventure, to the small picturesque town Oneonta, NY , the home of the NYSMF, started off with a bang.  Sean, rented us a fine “snot green” Jeep Patriot for our drive.  In the beginning this looked like it would be plenty big.  That was before we added the Tuba, French Horn, and Joel’s Trumpets.  That pretty much filled the entire storage compartment of the vehicle.  Now we had to add our luggage.   Needless to say, backing was a major hazard for us in that vehicle.   Thankfully, Sarah and Sam were already up at the Festival else, we would have had to rent a Hummer.

The drive was a pretty uneventful 13 hours of car riding bliss.  Joel taught us a VERY exciting game for the trip.  One that I won’t repeat here.  Because, once you start this game, it ALL goes down hill from there.  Happily, it provided us with countless hours of entertainment.  Once we arrived in Oneonta we unpacked and went to eat at the Neptune Diner. If you are ever in Oneonta, you need to visit this place.  They have EVERYTHING!!  After dinner we returned to the NYSMF campus and … rehearsed.  Yes, at 11:30 we met Sam and rehearsed until about 1:00am.

Before you ask, there is NO video of that rehearsal.  Joel, Sean and I were brain dead from 13 hours of driving and it was LATE!  You don’t want to hear it.  We only rehearsed in the first place because we hadn’t played as a group with Sam for about a month.

Our first morning started off with a reading of a Gabrieli Double quintet with the Festival’s Brass Faculty. Those guys were incredible!  I did get a video of the rehearsal reading but not the actual performance.  The camera ended up in a bad spot during the rehearsal.  Except for the jackhammer going off in the middle it sounded great but, the angle was bad and most of the people were cut out.  If any would like to hear/see that, leave a comment below and I will post it.

The remaining time was taken up with by working with some small ensembles and rehearsals for our Concert.   I still  need to go through all the pictures before I post them.  I have managed to get the concert off the camera and trimmed. Below you will find a Youtube playlist of the entire concert.  The tunes are in the order they were on the concert.  So,  if you turn up the sound and turn down the lights it will be ALMOST like you are there.  Total concert length comes in just a hair over an hour so, get yourself a drink and some popcorn and ENJOY!

Sean also taught the Brass Warm-up class one morning… I have video and pictures of that as well but, those all require Sean’s executive approval before I will post them.  The warm up class was quite interesting so, as soon as I get the A-OK, I’ll post up some of the highlights.  In the mean time, I hope you enjoy the show!