First the guest conductor: Dr. Leach from PSU. A brilliant man with a very good ability to teach. It was interesting this weekend because he is a very nice guy, but he doesn't like stupid people or stupid questions so at times he can seem mean. However, he got us to do everything he wanted in the program, so I would say he was successful in his conducting.
Some of his biggest emphases were probably sing smart, change your tone based on the piece (cough cough use African-American gospel pronunciation when singing gospel music) and watch the conductor, which is always a problem with choirs. I loved working with him(:Second: the pieces. There were two very distinct things about this list of repertoire. There was A LOT of gospel music and almost every piece was MEMORIZED!!! Now I have to tell you, Mr. Drafall never has us memorize pieces, so when I heard that was how it was going to be for all the pieces, I was very scared(: Luckily I had nothing to worry about because I knew the music well enough. Whew! And when I say gospel, it wasn't just some spirituals; we had the full-blown drum-set and electric bass for accompaniment, with choreography like step touches and clapping and crazy jazzy piano parts! In the words of Dr. Leach, we got in the groove! Unfortunately, because we live in Pennsylvania and nobody is like seriously LEGIT, it looked kind of cheesy to me but the audience loved it so I guess that's all that matters!
Third: the kids. Every year, there is always a very distinct divide in the students who come to the festivals. There are those who come through as a way to All-States (cough cough State High kids, me excluded), and then there are those who come to have fun and make the most of their time there. And man does some fun happen!
From having a catching-Froot-Loops-in-your-mouth-consecutively competition to the District Rumble (explained later) there just are so many great memories made! Honestly, I think PMEA should just make a school for PMEA participants and we can all go to the same school. That'd be AWESOME!!!Fourth, the DISTRICT RUMBLE!!! For those who don't know, its a cheer that was made up two years ago by a group of Bass IIs and how you do it is people start beating a beat similar to the beat in the song, We Will Rock You (boom-boom-clap, boom boom clap) and one person(usually whoever starts it) is the caller. So once the beats going, they get up a screams "Everybody do the District Rumble, every body do the District Rumble, Everybody! ( At this point everybody sticks their arms in an upwards diagonal, leans back and turns slowly). Then the caller screams: "Lean back and Rumble" and everybody then rolls their arms around each other at an upward angle and turns slowly. Of course, the problem we encountered last year when doing it was that it's a chorus festival and screaming king of affects how you sing. We were shut down by the conductors of other schools anytime we tried to get it going. So this year we were sneaky about it(: We were all eating lunch and everybody was telling me I should start it, but I didn't want to get in trouble, so I wasn't going to do it until I saw the only teacher in the cafeteria leave. It was such a now or never decision, so just to see how it would sound, I started beating the beat on the cafeteria table and clapping. Well everybody thought I was starting it so they joined in, and then everybody else joined in, and so I just decided to do it! I can't imagine how much adrenaline was pumping through my body right then, but it was a little too much(: It was so awesome cause nobody knew it, so after seeing them not understand, I explained it and after that, almost everyone did it! I loved it! Being completely hoarse afterwards wasn't too good, but it was sooo worth it! It was also such a full circle moment cause my first district chorus, Ethan was the one doing it and calling it out. It felt so amazing to carry on the Kennedy legacy and fill in my awesome brothers shoes! (As you might be able to tell from from the length of this paragraph versus the others, this was definitely the best part of the weekend!)
Finally, the concert. The cool thing was I had two solos. One as a horn player and one for the men's piece Tshotsholoza. The horn solo was absolutely beautiful. The piece it was set too was this gorgeous piece written for a family that had been killed and it has a super quiet, Latin text at the beginning, with a huge climax in the middle, and a big horn cadenza at the end. Not to mention, I didn't mess up which was great! My other solo was for a piece that was from South Africa and it was a piece all about freedom and rebellion. It was right in my power range so man did I sing out! I loved singing it!
Overall, it was an amazing way to start out my PMEA season! May the good times keep coming!
I was at the concert and Mark did a great job on both his horn solo and his singing solo and as his Dad I was very proud of him. He did a great job! I am glad he had so much fun!
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