Day 5: There Won't be A Dry Eye in the Bunch

Friday, anyone?

It was a very long but very great and productive day, though our instruments and our bodies are falling apart. Our day started out with a little bit of a unique Reveille with trumpets and a vuvuzela… which finally woke me and the baby! I told Dan he owed me a smoothie, but he didn’t take me seriously… I don’t know why…

This morning’s rehearsal was spent finishing and cleaning movement three. It was so hot! The weather forecast said it would be “mostly sunny,” but it was definitely “all sunny.” But we still got good work done.

Lunch was not nearly as interesting as yesterday. Too bad. That corn dog was tasty.

We started movement four this afternoon and did five pages of that. We had 10, but decided that the kids had probably reached their saturation point. When this happens, it’s just best to clean and get more confident with the pages they know. At this point the guard started adding the “strings” of our violin set. The band forms the shape of the violin, the scroll is made by the percussion, and the guard carries big bands through the middle to create the strings. It’s hard to see at ground level, but from a higher audience perspective, it will be really awesome.

Dinner was great because we got pizza from outside of camp! We still have some in our cabin for a late-night snack that Ben is enjoying right now. It’s so nice to not have to get ourselves to the dining hall for a meal.

After dinner we put together all of our new drill with music. This went really well, and I think the kids started to get really excited about their show. Friday is also the day where we start to see families gather at the sideline to watch the rehearsals. These families stay mostly across the street at the Interlochen State Park to camp for the weekend of our performance. A lot of alumni also show up starting on Friday – and some you would never expect to see again. 

Tonight was the first time we put our “running start” on the field. This means that we are going to start performing even before we are announced and time is officially started. To match our theme of going from an orchestral world to modern wind ensemble, we are starting this “running start” with an oboe playing a tuning “A.” Then musicians start to enter and pretend to be tuning. Next they play a variety of famous orchestral excerpts – like you might hear at a symphony concert. This all comes together to a big fanfare opening. When we did it for the first time with the guard doing their work, I could see how beautiful and powerful this is going to be throughout the season. I tried to hide the little tears I had over this beginning. It’s hard to not get emotionally attached to this activity. Anybody that has ever been involved will understand the feeling.

I realized tonight that the view I have presenting is likely very different than that of a student, a chaperone, or another staff member that isn’t as close to the band as I am. One of the chaperones here summed up her experience on her Facebook profile – “a few bee stings and mosquito bites, sore feet, a bent bike rim, a mouse sighting, lots of pie, clouds of Gold Bond medicated powder, foreheads imprinted with Sharpie, two birthdays, a lot less boy hair, and 100 more photos on my Nikon. Today's lesson--no amount of Febreeze neutralizes the scent of 14 pairs of girls' socks after a long day of marching/flag twirling. And that's Thursday...” It’s a great alternative perspective to what I’ve been writing.

The kids had a short dance tonight, cut short by some silly sound ordinance… Oh well, they need to sleep anyway! We have one more full day of camp before our performance on Sunday. It’s also a very dramatic day for the kids with the senior march happening at the end of the rehearsal day. There won’t be a dry eye in the bunch. Tomorrow’s weather looks a lot nicer for great productive rehearsals!