Klarinet Archive - Posting 000117.txt from 2004/10

From: "Ken Wolman" <kwolman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Clarinet popularity was: Now Opportunity
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2004 15:41:54 -0400

Haschengeliebter@-----.com wrote:

> where I came form in Ohio the band paid for everything and we had to march to
> be in regular band...and the real players were happy to play in the summer
> instead of get time off...most switched over to a brass instrument just for
> that
> season...but our school was way to small to have both separate...they HAD to
> make it like that or no one would march...and our band director made marching
> just like the regular band with a little different style...we still played
> stuff that was hard to the older kids and challenging...the younger ones
> probably

Told this before. My younger kid played trumpet from elementary thru junior
high. When he got to high school he wanted to play trumpet in the concert band.
To do that, he discovered he had to play in the marching band. At first the kid
was "bummed" by the prospect. Then he got to band camp: a weeklong orgy of
staying up all night, rehearsing during the day--including learning the
choreography for the numbers--and finally dunking the newly-appointed drum major
in the lake. Adventures involving duct tape also were involved. Nobody died,
and only one person got arrested: a 15-year-old kid who was caught with a joint
and was later expelled from a rehab in Pennsylvania for having a teddy bear
(awwww how cute) full of cocaine.

The first year he went, he got home on Saturday afternoon, lay down for a nap,
and woke up 15 hours later.

My son voluntarily took himself off trumpet because he wanted to solo, so he
switched to marching baritone: a trumpet on steroids.

He did indeed get to play with the concert band, and they were really pretty
good. As for the switch between types of instruments, we had one kid who was on
the drum line for marching band, then in the concert band season went back to his
primary instrument, the oboe. Now, if it had been a Heckelphone, they might have
heard him....

Every year the Board of Ed tried to cut the band's funding. And every year the
band parents showed up like a regiment at Fredericksburg and reminded the Board
that it's really sort of difficult to field a football team if you don't show up
with a band. It never failed....

Ken
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538

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