So it was with a fair bit of nerves that I went about my morning duties.  Would I catch the parade commander’s cues to march off the colours?  Would we be in the right place at the right time?  Would I be able to hear them announce the hymns?

Adding to my nerves was the fact that this service would probably be more watched than usual, thanks to the idiots who vandalized the cenotaph a few days ago.  This is, by the way, the official provincial cenotaph, not just the local one.  Here’s a great video by Charles Leblanc showing the damage:

But in the end, Remembrance Day isn’t about me, is it?  I gathered up my guts, had a great chat with the parade commander before we started who set me straight with a cheery smile, and off we went, without a hitch.  Well, no major ones anyway, but if you didn’t notice then I won’t tell. 

Flipper and Pomme came to watch, of course.  Here in New Brunswick, Remembrance Day is an official holiday — schools are closed (not that it makes a difference for us, but for most families it certainly does), offices are closed (so hubby was able to take the kids), most stores are closed.   Apparently there were about 5000 people in attendance, and 300 soldiers in the parade.  That’s young soldiers, not counting the elderly vets who were also out in great numbers.

Flipper took a great video of the parade arriving at the cenotaph.  I’m so grateful to him, since I never get to actually see parades anymore!

Not bad for an 11-year-old with a cheap videocam, eh?

Charles also captured a nice picture of the spectators showing Flipper (in the grey jacket with yellow shirt) and Pomme with daddy (sitting down beside Flipper).

First, their music is actually good.  It’s thoughtful, it’s well-composed, it’s interesting.  It’s not just bubblegum pop, cookie-cutter rock, same-old new punk.  It’s intelligent, from a musical and lyrical perspective.

And this is coming from someone with a Master’s Degree in Music.  I ain’t no slouch, people.  I know what I’m talking about.  Whether it’s your personal taste or not, the fact remains that this is “art” music that happens to be in a rock-pop genre.

I’m not a horrid elitist either, when it comes to popular music.  Okay, maybe a bit.  Or a lot.  But I have my weaknesses, my dark secrets, my musical sins.  I actually have been known to enjoy… gulp… Justin Timberlake.   And, um, Fall Out Boy.  Yeah.  I have fallen from the grace of Bach.

But I bear no shame for enjoying Coldplay.  It’s well-crafted stuff that I can be proud to appreciate.  Viva La Vida is a tour de force of an album, the greatest album — talking about the whole album, not just singles — that I’ve heard in years.  Maybe since Disintegration, which will stand forever as the greatest album of all time, yes indeedy.

I mean, the final track “Death and All of His Friends” swings into this funky little syncopated hybrid-meter section that I have yet to truly dissect.  It seems to be in seven, at least.  It’s bloody DIFFICULT to play something like that.  This is not “easy listening,” you have to work at it, and the payoff for your efforts is grand.  The lyrics in this passage just hammer it home:

I don’t want to battle from beginning to end
I don’t want a cycle of recycled revenge
I don’t want to follow Death and all of his friends

An indictment against the ludicrousness of war and violence, in my interpretation.  “A cycle of recycled revenge” pretty much sums up 99% of the planet’s current conflicts.  We still haven’t learned from our history and continue to blindly — even gleefully — follow the path of Death.

But all that musical analysis aside, and regardless of the depth and significance of the poetry which he sings…

Chris Martin is just frikkin’ HOT.

Not in that drop-dead square-jawed gorgeous kind of way.  Not the way that Robert Smith is hot.  Well, was hot, in his younger days anyway.  Now he’s still adorable, but he doesn’t induce palpitations and drool in me anymore.  Okay, some palpitations.  His voice is still hot.  But if I wish to sit and just gaze adoringly at photos of the man, I will choose those searing photos from his mid-20s, where he was a veritable sculpture of fineness.

Ahem… where was I… Oh yeah, Chris Martin.  He’s not hot in that way.  He’s hot in the geeky way.  Only girls who love geeks will understand me with this one, I think.  I’ve always had a fondness for the skinny guys with the thin faces, socially awkward but terribly intelligent.  Have you seen my husband??  Or, for that matter, most of my previous boyfriends… Smart guys are hot.

Then, add in that artistic flair, that vision which is just ever-so-slightly off the beaten path.  Be still my heart!  A geek and an artist??  If he can sing, and sing expressively, that’s even better.  Yeah, I had a few boyfriends who could do that…

Oh, and make him play the piano, too.  That’s icing on an already very sweet cake.  Mmmm… cake.

But he has to be fun, too.  Serious about his art, but in a non-serious kind of way.  I just watched Coldplay’s Grammy performance from a couple nights ago.  Chris Martin leaps down from the stage extension and dashes to the main stage, lightly and lithely hopping up the steps like some singing gazelle.  Like he’s full of joy, the spring in his step coming from the ecstasy of life itself.  I really don’t know what it is about the way he moves.  I just know I really, really like it.

Sweet old Robert is getting on in years, and I can’t idolize photos from the past forever.  He will always be number one, but perhaps it is time to pass on the torch… Torch, heh… Pass it on to someone closer to my age, who I can enjoy drooling over for many years to come.

And when Chris too starts to succumb to the ravages of time?

I guess then I’ll turn cougar, and start lusting after Pete Wentz.  Hot DOG that kid has some major cuteness going on.

Suffice it to say, it would be an important position in the local musical community.  It’s a position I have daydreamed about having.  It would be a heck of a lot of fun.

It would also be an enormous responsibility.  And therein lies the first question… Am I responsible enoungh???  Can I get over my procrastinating and lazy tendencies enough to live up to the requirements of doing this job well?

The next question is my experience.  I do not have direct experience for this position.  Plenty of indirect experience.  Lots of related experience.  And one class, taken many many years ago.  There would definitely be a learning curve.  But again, it’s something I’ve dreamed of doing, and I’m fairly certain I could do it.

Would I do it well?

Hubby thinks I would.  He thinks I do a wonderful job at everything I try.  Gotta love him!!  His main concern, like mine, would be getting over my immature laziness to live up to the responsibilities.  Ah, he knows me well.

The timing is most fortuitous.  I don’t believe in coincidences.  When things line up like this, there’s a reason for it.  And there are many things that have lined up over this past year, where this very well could be the “end goal” of everything.  Set ‘em up and knock ‘em down.   Even hubby, who is not nearly as convinced about such workings, said “it sounds like fate.”  It could be the opportunity I’ve been waiting for.

Well, I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.  I don’t have to decide right away, this wouldn’t start until at least the spring.  But it is a LOT to think about…

Let me clarify.  I’ve been playing the trombone since I was 10 years old.  When I was 12, I joined the City Band.  I played all through high school.  I played in the jazz band.  And when I went to Acadia University for my music degree (majoring in piano), I continued playing in the University Band and the jazz band and even took a year of lessons, for credit.

But I was not, what you would call, a great trombone player.  I was decent.  That’s all.  I enjoyed it to death.  I could count and figure out complicated passages, but I was not a “clean” player, I didn’t have great tone at all.  One band conductor, who shall remain nameless (but he knows who he is if he reads this!) once said to me in frustration, “Heather, you have to forget that you are a shy, skinny, teenaged white girl, and play like a 40-year-old large black man.”  I got the point.  But I still didn’t have the sound.

At Acadia, I was flying through all my courses with A’s and A+’s.  Trombone lessons, however, were frustrating.  I just couldn’t do the things my prof asked me to do.  My lips just didn’t work that way and my lungs would not cooperate.  When I barely managed to squeak a grade of B, that was the end of that. I’d still play in the bands for fun, but any notions I had of becoming a “trombonist” fell by the wayside.

I took one more stab at it, playing in the Music Festival back home one spring.  The adjudicator happened to be one of my profs at Acadia.  After my performance, he said to the audience, “Let me reassure you that this young lady is a very fine pianist.”  So much for that.

For the next 12 years after getting my BMus, I barely touched my horn.  My life took on other directions, and I just didn’t have the time to play in bands, as much as I would have liked to.

This past year, when we decided to move back home, I wanted to get back into it.  I knew I would be working less, and so I would join the City Band once again.  I knew I had a long road ahead of me of getting my chops back, but I missed it so much, I knew I could do it.

From the beginning, as expected, I had low endurance and some serious trouble in the middle range notes.

What I hadn’t expected was that — other than a bit of muscle fatigue — I would have gotten so much better.

I could play the high range notes more clearly.  I had a full, round open sound.   Within a few weeks of getting back into it (and not even practicing all that much), I was coping with all the band music just fine, and finding it easier than ever before.  Endurance would come with time.

What I also did not expect, was getting called for gigs.  As a trombonist.  As a pianist, sure, that’s how I make my living.  But when a local choir (one of the good ones too) needed a brass quartet for one of their Christmas pieces, I was called.  The other trombonist was my old junior high school and city band director, and one of the trumpets was my old high school director.  NO PRESSURE!

I felt terribly out of my league… but I did fine.

Then over the holidays, I was contacted by a local chamber orchestra.  They needed some trombones for spring concerts, a Schumann Symphony and Mozart’s Requiem, and had heard that I was a “fine” trombone player.

Well, then.  How could I say no to that?  After all, this is MOZART’S REQUIEM, only the single greatest piece of music ever composed…

I was in for yet another surprise.  It turned out they were giving me the alto trombone part.  For me and my tenor trombone.  In other words, I’d have to play very, very, very high notes.  In the alto clef.

The first rehearsal was an adventure in sight-reading and cacked notes.  Honestly, at that point, I wondered if I was in over my head.

But after a bit of practice at home, I started feeling much better about this super-high range.  At today’s rehearsal, I nailed 90% of the high Bb’s, 75% of the high C’s, and well… none of the high D’s, but there are only 2 of those.  Everything up to the high A was just fine.

I’ve decided to make an investment and get a couple new mouthpieces that are designed for playing in the high range.  It should help the consistency of those high notes.  I’m even contemplating getting an actual alto trombone, but they’re expensive and we’re, well, broke.

But even though the accuracy of the high notes is still a bit sketchy at times, this fact remains true:  they sound good.  The whole brass section sounds great and I’m soaring out on top of it all, oftentimes even higher than the trumpet parts.  The other orchestra members are frequently leaning back and commenting to us how great we sound.

And I feel comfortable up there.  I feel confident.  And competent.

How did taking over 12 years off, improve my skills so much?  When did I become a trombonist??

Photo credit: gregor-y via Creative Commons

I just found out that I won one of them, and I’m pretty sure it’s the first blog contest I ever entered!  I won a CD of Latin Carols from Classical Academic Press (ooh, they have Latin primers for children… tempting!!!)

Especially since I am by trade and training a classical musician, with a love for ancient music, this is a wonderful prize for me and I just can’t believe my luck!  And as an added bonus, I found a publisher of some very nice-looking homeschool resources I’d previously been unaware of.  Merry Christmas!

Things have just been so busy, what with running my kids around and my work as a musician, and trying to get a new house organized.  I still plan to get it going eventually… I hope to get a serger after Christmas, which will certainly make a difference!

But in the meantime… I think I’ll just turn this site into a good old blog!  I’ll be blogging on whatever is relevant to us… homeschooling, parenting, eco-stuff, music, whatever I think might be interesting.   I certainly am opiniated enough to make a go of blogging about it LOL…