Collectively, A thread to celebrate our kids Non-Athletic accomplishments. (1 Viewer)

[Gally]

We had our 5 y.o. grandson over at our house (his usual Friday with us), and while having lunch, he suddenly raised his hand to shut off conversation. After some silence, he explained that Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight was on the radio (which I hadn’t noticed) and he had to hear the drum intro. Some life skills just can’t be taught.

Seinfeld - Desperado

youtu.be

 

[El Floppo]

My 16yo HS Jr son is in Juilliards pre-college program as a percussionist.

Will be playing with the NY Philharmonic at Lincoln Center in a couple weeks, and JUST found out that next year Stuart Copeland (the Police) will be in-house writing a piece for the percussion ensemble!!

Hey GB - FYI, I almost went into music instead of business as a career …as a percussionist (band/orchestral). But I wasn’t skilled with mallet instruments, and went with accounting. No major regrets, but I always wonder…

I’ll always be interested to hear about your son’s development with it!

He also had his Juilliard percussion ensemble performance that evening... A looooong day.

Percussion ensemble music is waaaaaaaay out there.

One of the pieces' instrumentation was 4 kids on matching mixing bowls with handles covering cell phones playing a drone. Bowls lifted and lowered at different speed and whacked with sticks.

 

[Todem]

My son was on the Deans list for his Freshman year in college. Being a student athlete......I was extremely proud of him for making this huge transition to being away (750 miles from home), playing ball and taking care of his grades and himself in fine fashion.

He has his last week of classes this week......looking forward to having him home in a few weeks (once baseball season is over) for the summer.

 

[Rustoleum]

My 16yo HS Jr son is in Juilliards pre-college program as a percussionist.

Will be playing with the NY Philharmonic at Lincoln Center in a couple weeks, and JUST found out that next year Stuart Copeland (the Police) will be in-house writing a piece for the percussion ensemble!!

Hey GB - FYI, I almost went into music instead of business as a career …as a percussionist (band/orchestral). But I wasn’t skilled with mallet instruments, and went with accounting. No major regrets, but I always wonder…

I’ll always be interested to hear about your son’s development with it!

He also had his Juilliard percussion ensemble performance that evening... A looooong day.

Percussion ensemble music is waaaaaaaay out there.

One of the pieces' instrumentation was 4 kids on matching mixing bowls with handles covering cell phones playing a drone. Bowls lifted and lowered at different speed and whacked with sticks.

You could add 50 more aaaaa’s in there and it would still be an understatement.

My daughter is a sophomore percussion/music Ed major at Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.

Last week she was the tympani player for a 500 singer/musician performance of Carmina Burana at Music Hall.

3 days later for percussion ensemble she played….. a dinner plate and a water glass that she had to tune mid performance by drinking some of it. It was a piece called Dining Room Music, which was an homage to an earlier piece called Living Room Music,where among the things she played was… a deck of cards against a coffee table.

I’ve watched them “play” 20 radios by randomly tuning them at different times, smack bowls of water and submerge tuning forks , etc. for 10 solid minutes.

And then 2 weeks later they put on an amazing steel drum concert.

The “out there” stuff is awesome in its own weird way, but fortunately there are enough Carmina Buranas and steel drum concerts to keep me from questioning where exactly the tuition money is going.

 

[Manster]

We got our kids doing chores with minimal complaining

 

[Rustoleum]

Steel band concert

(Mine’s the blonde next to the giant right in the middle).

 

[El Floppo]

Steel band concert

(Mine’s the blonde next to the giant right in the middle).

We need to talk.

 

[Rustoleum]

Steel band concert

(Mine’s the blonde next to the giant right in the middle).

We need to talk.

Any time. And if CCM is under consideration when college season happens, let me know and I’ll tell her to try to be assigned to “shadow”. But, holy cow, hope Juilliard comes calling first.

 

[El Floppo]

Steel band concert

(Mine’s the blonde next to the giant right in the middle).

We need to talk.

Any time. And if CCM is under consideration when college season happens, let me know and I’ll tell her to try to be assigned to “shadow”. But, holy cow, hope Juilliard comes calling first.

He doesn't want to go the conservatory route. Where he went for middle school becomes a conservatory prep HS, so he made the decision then (as well as shifting to the Juilliard program).

That said, he's looking at colleges that have relationships with conservatories so he can keep his feet wet at a high level while studying whatever he ends up studying.

It's so, so cool your daughter is in percussion. There are so few women in it- they need lots more.

How did she get started? What are her plans for it afterwards?

 

[Rustoleum]

Steel band concert

(Mine’s the blonde next to the giant right in the middle).

We need to talk.

Any time. And if CCM is under consideration when college season happens, let me know and I’ll tell her to try to be assigned to “shadow”. But, holy cow, hope Juilliard comes calling first.

He doesn't want to go the conservatory route. Where he went for middle school becomes a conservatory prep HS, so he made the decision then (as well as shifting to the Juilliard program).

That said, he's looking at colleges that have relationships with conservatories so he can keep his feet wet at a high level while studying whatever he ends up studying.

It's so, so cool your daughter is in percussion. There are so few women in it- they need lots more.

How did she get started? What are her plans for it afterwards?

CCM is really part of the University of Cincinnati. If I understand it correctly, the conservatory merged with the university a ways back but kept the name. (But the UC bands are a whole separate entity. Some, but not many, of the music majors double-dip.)

My dad is a retired 30+ year veteran junior high band director, their other grandpa played guitar in bar bands for 30ish years, and I play trumpet and piano, so my kids were doomed from day 1 (son is a senior music Ed major at Northern Ky University and a sax player.)

Daughter took piano lessons from 1st grade through 8th grade. In 7th grade, in probably the last thing she agreed with me for 6 years, I convinced her she would have more fun in band than chorus. She was apprehensive about starting a wind instrument basically a year behind since band starts in 6th grade most places here. I told her, look, you’ve been playing piano for years. You can walk in there blindfolded and start on mallets, it’s like 8 less fingers. And wa-la, a budding percussionist was born. Added bonus was her high school has a fantastic percussion teacher. They won National WGI championship in their class her sophomore or junior year, and marching band and leading the “pit” transformed her from a quiet, anxious little mouse into a rockstar (albeit one that can play literally every percussion instrument except an actual drum set. Yet.. lol)

She also did a year with the Cincinnati Youth Symphony Orchestra that convinced her that was what she wanted to do in college.

Now, she does stuff with 4 mallet technique that my eyes can’t even track in between bouts of banging on flower pots or some other “found” percussion instruments for the ensemble pieces.

She is double majoring in performance and music Ed, so she could go into teaching, but she has the chops and desire to do grad school and make a living performing I think. She’s a practice fanatic, while her brother is the king of “good enough” most days, lol, He’s more of a jazz/rock band player type, and is really good, but he likes to jump between alto, tenor and then I’ll hear trumpet for more days than sax, which is allegedly his “main”. He’ll make a great band director being able to start kids on everything that way, but he likely won’t be sitting in with the Cincinnati Pops.

 

[El Floppo]

Steel band concert

(Mine’s the blonde next to the giant right in the middle).

We need to talk.

Any time. And if CCM is under consideration when college season happens, let me know and I’ll tell her to try to be assigned to “shadow”. But, holy cow, hope Juilliard comes calling first.

He doesn't want to go the conservatory route. Where he went for middle school becomes a conservatory prep HS, so he made the decision then (as well as shifting to the Juilliard program).

That said, he's looking at colleges that have relationships with conservatories so he can keep his feet wet at a high level while studying whatever he ends up studying.

It's so, so cool your daughter is in percussion. There are so few women in it- they need lots more.

How did she get started? What are her plans for it afterwards?

CCM is really part of the University of Cincinnati. If I understand it correctly, the conservatory merged with the university a ways back but kept the name. (But the UC bands are a whole separate entity. Some, but not many, of the music majors double-dip.)

My dad is a retired 30+ year veteran junior high band director, their other grandpa played guitar in bar bands for 30ish years, and I play trumpet and piano, so my kids were doomed from day 1 (son is a senior music Ed major at Northern Ky University and a sax player.)

Daughter took piano lessons from 1st grade through 8th grade. In 7th grade, in probably the last thing she agreed with me for 6 years, I convinced her she would have more fun in band than chorus. She was apprehensive about starting a wind instrument basically a year behind since band starts in 6th grade most places here. I told her, look, you’ve been playing piano for years. You can walk in there blindfolded and start on mallets, it’s like 8 less fingers. And wa-la, a budding percussionist was born. Added bonus was her high school has a fantastic percussion teacher. They won National WGI championship in their class her sophomore or junior year, and marching band and leading the “pit” transformed her from a quiet, anxious little mouse into a rockstar (albeit one that can play literally every percussion instrument except an actual drum set. Yet.. lol)

She also did a year with the Cincinnati Youth Symphony Orchestra that convinced her that was what she wanted to do in college.

Now, she does stuff with 4 mallet technique that my eyes can’t even track in between bouts of banging on flower pots or some other “found” percussion instruments for the ensemble pieces.

She is double majoring in performance and music Ed, so she could go into teaching, but she has the chops and desire to do grad school and make a living performing I think. She’s a practice fanatic, while her brother is the king of “good enough” most days, lol, He’s more of a jazz/rock band player type, and is really good, but he likes to jump between alto, tenor and then I’ll hear trumpet for more days than sax, which is allegedly his “main”. He’ll make a great band director being able to start kids on everything that way, but he likely won’t be sitting in with the Cincinnati Pops.

Amazing family!! Thank you for sharing that. Do they ever play together?

Hitting the sack, but so many more questions/comments..

Fwiw... Here are the other pieces played in this last performance (not them performing). Rusty already gets it, but for anybody else- this is the world he and I are in now

Trance I by Ivan Trevino | Furman Percussion Ensemble

TRANCES was commissioned by a consortium of musicians, led and organized by the Green Vibes Project (https://www.greenvibesproject.org), whose support brough...

youtu.be

Juri Seo, Wah (2014)

for 2-5 wah wah tubesPortable Percussion Series No. 3Juri Seo, composer Justin Peters, Tim Berg, Mark Eichenberger, percussionistsEvan Chapman, video artistF...

youtu.be

Juiliiard has a strict no-recording rule for all performances, so we get nothing. Sucks.

 

[Rustoleum]

Steel band concert

(Mine’s the blonde next to the giant right in the middle).

We need to talk.

Any time. And if CCM is under consideration when college season happens, let me know and I’ll tell her to try to be assigned to “shadow”. But, holy cow, hope Juilliard comes calling first.

He doesn't want to go the conservatory route. Where he went for middle school becomes a conservatory prep HS, so he made the decision then (as well as shifting to the Juilliard program).

That said, he's looking at colleges that have relationships with conservatories so he can keep his feet wet at a high level while studying whatever he ends up studying.

It's so, so cool your daughter is in percussion. There are so few women in it- they need lots more.

How did she get started? What are her plans for it afterwards?

CCM is really part of the University of Cincinnati. If I understand it correctly, the conservatory merged with the university a ways back but kept the name. (But the UC bands are a whole separate entity. Some, but not many, of the music majors double-dip.)

My dad is a retired 30+ year veteran junior high band director, their other grandpa played guitar in bar bands for 30ish years, and I play trumpet and piano, so my kids were doomed from day 1 (son is a senior music Ed major at Northern Ky University and a sax player.)

Daughter took piano lessons from 1st grade through 8th grade. In 7th grade, in probably the last thing she agreed with me for 6 years, I convinced her she would have more fun in band than chorus. She was apprehensive about starting a wind instrument basically a year behind since band starts in 6th grade most places here. I told her, look, you’ve been playing piano for years. You can walk in there blindfolded and start on mallets, it’s like 8 less fingers. And wa-la, a budding percussionist was born. Added bonus was her high school has a fantastic percussion teacher. They won National WGI championship in their class her sophomore or junior year, and marching band and leading the “pit” transformed her from a quiet, anxious little mouse into a rockstar (albeit one that can play literally every percussion instrument except an actual drum set. Yet.. lol)

She also did a year with the Cincinnati Youth Symphony Orchestra that convinced her that was what she wanted to do in college.

Now, she does stuff with 4 mallet technique that my eyes can’t even track in between bouts of banging on flower pots or some other “found” percussion instruments for the ensemble pieces.

She is double majoring in performance and music Ed, so she could go into teaching, but she has the chops and desire to do grad school and make a living performing I think. She’s a practice fanatic, while her brother is the king of “good enough” most days, lol, He’s more of a jazz/rock band player type, and is really good, but he likes to jump between alto, tenor and then I’ll hear trumpet for more days than sax, which is allegedly his “main”. He’ll make a great band director being able to start kids on everything that way, but he likely won’t be sitting in with the Cincinnati Pops.

Amazing family!! Thank you for sharing that. Do they ever play together?

Hitting the sack, but so many more questions/comments..

Fwiw... Here are the other pieces played in this last performance (not them performing). Rusty already gets it, but for anybody else- this is the world he and I are in now

Trance I by Ivan Trevino | Furman Percussion Ensemble

TRANCES was commissioned by a consortium of musicians, led and organized by the Green Vibes Project (https://www.greenvibesproject.org), whose support brough...

youtu.be

Juri Seo, Wah (2014)

for 2-5 wah wah tubesPortable Percussion Series No. 3Juri Seo, composer Justin Peters, Tim Berg, Mark Eichenberger, percussionistsEvan Chapman, video artistF...

youtu.be

Juiliiard has a strict no-recording rule for all performances, so we get nothing. Sucks.

Yeah, CCM is the same with the recordings, but sometimes they film and release on YouTube like the steel band concert. I did sneak a voice memo recording of the 1st movement of Carmina Burana (the famous part everybody has heard even if they don’t know it) I’ll see if I can link, along with a picture of the hall filled with so many musicians and singers. It was crazy.

I hear them upstairs clowning around together all the time, usually on different instruments than their “mains” or trying to flex their music theory muscles and stump each other on chord progressions, which all goes over my head. Sometimes I hear my son playing recorder over discord while he’s playing online games with friends, He says he does it because it drives his friends nuts and it gives him an edge, lol. otherwise they usually are doing separate stuff (aside from 2 years of high school band that overlapped) though theydid sit in together and make some side cash playing graduation band stuff for his college because they were short handed.

Also, I liked that wah wah tube piece. That other one may have triggered a little PTSD though. Not enough time has passed since I watched 15 minutes of 4 students playing multiple triangles. (A lot of the time, I appreciate the concept and crazy focused counting, but feel they could chop 5 minutes off almost every piece.)

 

[Rustoleum]

So today, in only her second solo driving excursion, my brilliant daughter navigated downtown Cincinnati, then sent me a photo of her perfect parallel park job…..directly in front of a fire hydrant.

I did manage to give kudos for the excellent placement before telling her to move it immediately.