January 2020 Updates - Blasslevania, MAGFest, and Composition
I figured the beginning of the New Year was a good time to post some updates!
Life
As of December, I’ve officially graduated from the Eastman School of Music with a degree in music education and euphonium performance! This past semester was my student teaching semester, and it was a wonderful experience. I had two great placements and two great cooperating teachers, and really enjoyed teaching at both the elementary and the high school level. I’m back in the Baltimore area where I grew up, and I plan on having a full-time teaching position by next school year, I’m most likely going to do some substitute teaching until then.
Brasslevania: a Tribute to the Video Game Macabre
Back at Halloween time, The Game Brass released a Spooky-themed album that I had the good fortune of playing 2nd horn on. They expanded their usual instrumentation and used a brass nonet as the core ensemble for the album. The arrangements were all extremely well-written, and were all done by Thomas Kresge. It was a blast recording the parts to these arrangements and getting to work with such talented people. The album can be purchased here: Album link
MAGFest
On a related note, performing some of these arrangements and just getting to jam with The Game Brass was certainly the highlight of my time at MAGFest this year. In addition, I got to perform on a panel organized by John Stacy. For this panel, he composed a piece to go along with the world record speed-run of Ocarina of Time, and we performed it live. The piece was pretty insane, and the live performance was absolutely exhilarating. I hope he does another one of these for next year’s MAGFest. Other than those things, I just got to see some performances and panels, and play in the jam clinic with my good friend Steven Higbee, so it was a pretty relaxed MAGFest for me. I’m hoping Ocabanda can come as a group again next year!
Composition
One of my high school friends asked me about a year ago if I would help her compose a piece as a graduation present to one of her professors. We started working on it this summer, and are now almost done! I have more formal training in music than her, so I got to do a lot of the orchestration and development of melodies that she came up with, which is right up my alley. I was able to get a lot of Eastman friends to record for it just before I left, which was very helpful. The piece is called Krause Suite, and is written for a small orchestra. I’m looking forward to sharing some of it in the coming months!
Additionally, Coin Op. Studios is planning to release an original album around April, so I’ll be doing more composing for that. Maybe I’ll venture out an put some original compositions on my YouTube channel as well.
I think that’s it for now. I’m getting back into posting two YouTube videos a month, so be sure to look out for those!