Four-day Weekend!

This last weekend, we were scheduled to have a teacher retreat; something I was looking forward to, but something which I knew would also eat up a lot of time. However, thanks to a cold epidemic that knocked out many students and a third of the teachers at school, we got a four-day weekend and no teacher retreat instead.

All that to say, I had a profitable weekend. We were told to rest up, and I was diligent in that task.

On Thursday, I went to a tuba ensemble concert in downtown Bogotá with a friend. It was great. It was the concluding concert of a tuba festival that had been in town since September first, featuring Mel Culbertson as clinician. The first half of the concert was a new composition (I believe) for solo tuba (Mr. Culbertson) with piano, timpani, and brass ensemble. The second half consisted of a variety of pieces which included such varied repertoire as a setting of an “Ave Maria”, a couple of Sousa marches, a number from the Phantom of the Opera, the Beatles’ “Rock and Roll Music”, and a few pieces typical of various regions of Colombia.

Notice that tuba players’ Joie de vivre is universal (note the evidence of the following video). I think my favorite part is at 0:48.

You may notice that in most ensembles, the low brass section is significantly smaller than other sections. Now you know that this is to prevent any ensemble from having too much fun.

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