J.C.'s REVIEW
A Night at the Opera
January 30-31, 2010
Music from the Kilties 2010 production titled “A Night at the Opera” was brought to life on Sunday afternoon in the Gilmore Middle School theatre. The musical performance of the 2010 Kiltie field show elicited enthusiastic applause and marked the first milestone of the young season. It was the direct result of a lot of work by both the creative staff and the corps membership, but I’m getting a little ahead of myself...
We started Saturday morning with 9AM breakfast followed by 10AM full corps stretch in the gym. I could tell immediately that I’m a little less flexible than I was at the end of last season, so I felt pretty good about getting back into the whole stretching routine. Then Bobby Lindsey and Chris “Scooter” Jacobson fronted our first basics block of the season. They defined the basics of the Kiltie marching style, including our three inch toe lift moving forward, one inch toe lift marching backward, the roll step, and most importantly, the concept of marching from the center of our bodies. Tempo, and how it relates to the feet was also discussed in great detail. Then we did about a gazillion sets of “eights and eights” in both the forward and reverse directions. Marching at the January camp is always a humbling experience. Good marching technique is something that needs to be practiced. Marching skills erode when they are not used continuously, so now we all know that we have some work to do to duplicate and then surpass our proficiency level of last season.
Next up for the brass line was breathing and warm-ups in the cafeteria fronted by Bobby Lindsey, followed by the playing of our parade and concert repertoire. We led off with concert piece “Water is Wide”, arranged by Jerry Kelsey as a tribute to our fallen brother Joel “Lothar” Magnuson. I still get a little misty eyed when I play that song. Then we worked our classic parade selections which will once again be Kenny Norman’s great arrangements of “Scotland the Brave” and “Auld Lang Syne”. That took us all the way to our 1:30 sandwich buffet lunch.
After lunch we jumped into the field show music. The full brass line did a couple of runs of Movement I which is a concatenation of “Ride of the Valkyries” by Richard Wagner and “William Tell Overture” by Gioachino Rossini. The brass arc was fronted by our 2010 brass arranger Rick Kirby. This gave us a sense of what parts of the arrangement need the most work before we split up into sectionals. The mellophones headed off to the band room with Rick Kirby and spent about an hour and a half breaking the chart down. I love this chart! I become the Lone Ranger of double-tonguing when I play it. At 5PM we got the full brass line back together and played the tune down. All I can say is hold on to your hats folks. This song is going to be something!
After dinner, the brass line got back together and jumped into Movement II, “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Freddie Mercury. Rick’s arrangement is pretty true to the original “Queen” recording, and it practically begs you to sing along. We attacked it just like we did Movement I, playing a couple of runs as a full brass ensemble before breaking into sectionals. In our mellophone sectional, Rick coaxed some feeling out of us, especially in the opening section of the chart which begs for musicality and perfect pitch. At 8PM we got the brass line back together and played the chart down. Our sectional work resulted in vast improvement. The tune itself is more fun than a barrel of monkeys, and Scott promises lots of visual surprises on the field to accompany the great musical arrangement.
Sunday morning stiffness reinforced the need for a good stretch so I was grateful for our extended post-breakfast stretch-a-thon. It was followed by another full corps basics block in the gym. We added step size and interval training to the previous day’s topics. We finished the session with forward and reverse oblique movement drills. As you might expect in January, we have a little work to do in this area.
At noon, the battery headed back to where ever it is they head off to, the guard stayed in the gym and the brass line headed to the cafeteria. Following breathing and warm-ups, we jumped right into Movement III, “Bacchanale” from “Samson and Delilah” by Camille Saint-Saëns. For me, this has been the toughest chart to learn, mainly because of the “perfect second” intervals throughout the piece that result in fingering sequences that give me more trouble than I’m used to having. The good news is that the chart allows the mellophones to peal a little paint! Lots of trills, runs and rips culminating in some seemingly unending triple forte power chords to finish the piece. Now that’s drum corps!
We spent a little time after lunch auditioning for the various brass solos and features throughout the show, and then we played down the Movements I and II in preparation for our first full brass and percussion ensemble session of the year in the theatre.
At 4PM we assembled the entire musical ensemble in the theatre with the pit percussion occupying the stage, the battery filling the area directly in front of the stage and the brass line forming 2 arcs in the center aisle of the theatre facing the stage.
Movement I (Ride ‘m Willie) cooked! Most of the tempo issues that we had experienced playing the chart with just the brass line went away in the presence of the driving beats emanating from the percussion section. The mallet parts to this tune are utterly ridiculous! The frenetic musical climax of the “William Tell Overture” is capped by a final vein-popping mellophone C to C triple forte octave rip. I snapped my horn down after the final release and let a little oxygen return to my system. When the drum major told us to relax I looked over at fellow mellos Beth Landbo and Kathy Veerhusen and said, “That was pretty good!” They were all smiles and Kathy said “Ya, that definitely didn’t suck!” I couldn’t have said it better myself. :-)
Movement II (Bohemian Rhapsody) also cooked! I was particularly impressed with the fact that everything held together between the brass and percussion sections during all the tricky time signature and tempo changes. It was pretty obvious that the corps membership had done their homework. If the audience has half as much fun listening to this song as we have playing it, they will be in for a treat!
The brass line finished the concert by playing Movement III (Bacchanale) for the rest of the corps. We all squeezed just enough out of our battered chops to cap the show with some serious power chordage that literally shook the house. Mission accomplished!
Scott Stewart congratulated the corps on a solid camp weekend. He told us that this group has the talent base to take the corps to a whole new level of achievement. With the first camp under our belt, we have done nothing to impede the climb to that new level. In other words, we had a really great January camp and we have great momentum moving forward. It’s now up to us to work as hard as we can between now and our February camp to ratchet our performance level up another few notches. Based on what I saw over the weekend, I’m confident that the membership will do just that. We were reminded that there are only 2 camps worth of rehearsal before we debut our show to the public to cap off the March camp. We will learn the drill in April and May, and will be doing complete run-throughs of the show on Memorial Day weekend. The goal is to be really good out of the chute. The paying fans at our first show deserve nothing less.
Then Scott talked about where we’re at numbers-wise. We’ll field a slightly larger corps than we did 2009. In the brass line we have an opening for a contra player. In the percussion section we an opening for a snare, a quad and a front ensemble performer. We haven’t set final numbers for the guard yet. We have 22 guard members on the roster and would like to expand on that number. Better act soon. Drill writing gets underway in February which means the membership will be closed for the season.
As is our tradition, we closed camp with the playing of Slow Syne. It’s funny how that song seems to draw a different set of emotions out of me every time we play it. On this day, it seemed to draw feelings of pride out of me as I looked out at all the new members that have joined the Kiltie family for the 2010 season. I couldn’t help but feel proud of the fact that the Kilties are alive and well on our 75th anniversary, able to offer these new members a unique experience that will leave them with feelings of fierce pride just like those that I was experiencing as the last note of Syne echoed in the theatre. Like I always say… “It’s good to be us!”
WWBD,
J.C.
