Festival Season, Part 1 + New Videos!

Phew! I made it through the first part of festival season! Starting almost from the beginning of classes in January, I got to go and work as an invited guest conductor with school bands across the GTA, including Cardinal Carter CHS in Aurora, Our Lady Queen of the World Catholic Academy in Richmond Hill, and Marshall McLuhan CSS in Toronto. These groups were all preparing for participation in the Ontario Band Association’s Provincial Band Festival, which took place in the second week of February. This year’s festival had a whopping 162 ensembles perform over five days! The Rouge River Winds also participated in the festival as usual, and once again were awarded a Gold Standard for their performance. I was also honoured to receive a Conducting Excellence award from the adjudication panel!

Then, the following week, I flew to Winnipeg to adjudicate at the Manitoba Band Association’s Concert Band Festival, which saw another 130 or so bands perform, mostly from the Winnipeg area, but some from further afield, places like Brandon and Dauphin. One band even travelled seven hours from Thompson, Manitoba to showcase their skills! As part of the festival, my colleague, fellow adjudicator, and editor of Winds of the North, Darrin Oehlerking, organized a reception for the book’s contributors, including myself. The reception and the festival as a whole were a great opportunity to connect with the wonderful community of band educators in Manitoba!

Meanwhile, several excellent videos from the UofT Wind Ensemble’s latest concert have become available. I myself edited together the audio from our performance with the background audio and video that accompany Kenley Kristofferson’s charming and nostalgic Arcadia for wind ensemble and retro video game console.

Fish Yu, who composed Festival Eve, concerto for two percussionists and wind ensemble, produced a high quality video of our performance with the KöNG Duo.

And a couple of weeks ago, the Faculty’s recording tech staff was kind enough to edit and release our performance of Cait Nishimura’s Intrinsic Light as a feature video on the Faculty’s YouTube channel!

Coming up next Friday evening, I will lead the Milton Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert called “Classical Gems”, featuring guest soloist Tiffany Yeung performing “Winter” and “Spring” from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.