Something that not alot of people may know about me is that I am totally obsessed with “Appalachian Spring”, an orchestra piece written by Aaron Copland. I even wrote a paper on it in one of my classes at UofT called “The Essence of Appalachian Spring”.
Anyway, the reason I bring that up is because of orchestra camp this week, where I was teaching the guitar… and also, relearning how to play the trumpet. Another thing that most people don’t relaly know about me is I played trumpet – pretty good too – in Elementary School, and Junior High. I know most people only know me for my piano playing…
But unfortunately, when I was deciding to go to high school, the main thing I took into account was the fact, at the time, that I wanted to become a computer programer. And so, because of that, I decided to go to satec @ W.A. Porter, a very technological high school in Scarborough. Well of course at satec, it was mostly computers that we studied, though we did have a music class, which I took, but even then, we studied music in the context of computers (learning midi, etc etc).
So what does this have to do with questining life choices… At the end of orchestra week, we wanted to show the kids what it was like to bring together all of the sections of the orchestra that they learned about (Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion, Strings, etc.) and how they come together to play as an orchestra. And for that, Rob showed us a video of Blast!, a broadway performance of an orchestra, that’s not your typical orchestra.
Well what do you know… What video did Rob show us (Ok, well, because I requested it), Blast! performing Appalachian Spring. It was a mostly brass arrangement. Which is what was on my mind really when I started thinking back to you know.. my decision about which high school to do to, and basically discontinue my studie in music/the trumpet.
Here’s a video of the performance… I’m sure you can see why it’s got me questioning some of my life choices so far…