Pan Ramajay Steel Drum Festival - day 2 con't

To mix things up, we had a choice of electives for our first afternoon session (same for Thursday). I chose arranging with Tom for today. Tom used his arrangement of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow as an example to walk through.


Tom offered helpful advice on how to approach an arrangement, from choosing a groove to voicings. Thought is put into the ranges to prevent clash with the melody for example. A lot of good information here, so a good choice in retrospect.

Rehearsals

Afternoon rehearsals were with Ray, then with Alan. Its a really neat thing to work with Ray. He has a very musical mind. At the same time, it's a bit scary because you wonder if the that was written for you will stop changing and whether the rest of the chart will get put down on paper in time to perform the piece for an audience at the end of the week. Oh well, I guess the don't write much down in Trinidad Tobago. There is some level of comfort that comes from Ray never being worried or rushed, and exuding confidence.

Alan's rehearsal was great. We got through all of page one, and the second page is mostly rehash. The Michael Jackson tune is a really tasteful arrangement for steel band. One observation about Alan, though, is that he tends to allow noodling while he is working with a section of the band. This sometimes leads to a cacophony.


Our rehearsal space

Evening Concert
For the concert, we were treated to the Pan Nation, an ensemble of graduates and current advanced students at DU, featuring a composition and performance by faculty members. The music was great - even better than last night! I felt the strong urge to go practice directly afterward. An hour and a half did the trick.


Pan Nation performing with Jim Munzenrider
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