Horn Insights ~ Jeffrey Agrell's Horn Blog

Imani Winds (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have long been a huge fan of the Imani Winds - a woodwind quintet that has a distinct and delicious vision of what a woodwind quintet can do. Catch them live in concert if you ever get the chance! For a taste of their vision and abilities, check out this “Tiny Desk Concert” video currently playing on NPR; they perform excerpts of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in a brilliant arrangement for 5 winds of the original massive orchestral score. An amazing feat!

Rupert Christiansen of the UK’s The Telegraph has written a startling report on the findings of Britain’s Arts Council that “aims to show the economic value of public investment in arts and culture.” According to the report, the arts contribute 4X as much to GDP as they cost in taxes to support. Think about it: if you had a business and you knew that every dollar you invest in it would generate fourfold as much as you put into it, what is the only rational (and completely economic!) response to such intelligence?

The Guardian also reported on this same report.  The culture secretary of the UK “recently called for the economic case to be made for the arts, “to hammer home the value of culture to our economy.’ She added: ‘In an age of austerity, when times are tough and money is tight, our focus must be on culture’s economic impact.’” The report underscores that “far from being a drain on public resources,” spending on the arts brings a huge (4X) return on investment, and that culture “plays a vital part in attracting tourism (£856 million a year); that arts centers and activities transform our towns and cities and drive regeneration, making the choice to maintain investment in culture a forward thinking one… and that the arts support the creative industries and improve their productivity.”

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(Photo credit: thinkmedialabs)

I don’t know about you, but the toughest part of performing for me is walking on stage and getting started.

I usually get to feel at home on the stage after a little while, but it takes time. Part of that is because we always practice our technique and our pieces, but we don’t practice walking on stage. And starting. We don’t practice this much outside of the concert itself. No wonder it’s harder than it should be.

With this in mind, we tried something new in studio class yesterday. We used the time for everyone – one after the other – to walk on stage, give oral program notes, and then play the first 20-30 seconds of their piece. Next! We repeated this speed-performing exercise for the whole period. So instead of just having one experience now and then of walking on stage (the rest of the group supplied applause to enhance the verisimilitude of the experience) at a dress rehearsal and then the concert itself, everyone had a number of chances in a short time frame. I noticed that players got noticeable better at speaking and starting with each repetition.

I made notes on points for improvement:

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In 5 minutes, this video (Instrumentos musicales del mundo parte 5) shows you just about every kind of wind instrument from near, far, past, present, and possible Outer Space that anyone ever imagined. The (very) brief demo videos are of wildly varying quality and sources. Really – if you can think of a wind instrument that isn’t here, let me know. Includes the regular brass and woodwinds, plus bass horn (tuba in the shape of a French horn), helicon (little kid playing Wagner), bugles, post horn, weird-no-name-horn, bass saxophone, serpent, cimbasso, saxhorn, “amazing tuba: (sic) playing Bach Badinerie, bass flute, and more. Wild stuff.

The current digs where our music studios are are very comfortable (Wenger practice units with built-in acoustic environments and digital recording) and convenient (right downtown!), but are ultimately temporary. Our brand new music building will be ready for the fall semester of 2016. Amazing is that three years before it is even opened, the new complex has already won an architectural award: the Suspended Theatroacoustic System for the new concert hall has won Architzer’s A+ Award. Here’s what it looks like:

For more details on the new S.o.M., click here.