Musical Moments

Yesterday, we went to Cal State University East Bay at Hayward. It is the first time we went there and we used Nuvi to guide us. Just as we reached the address keyed into Nuvi, Bert made a wrong turn by only a few feet and the dumb Nuvi quickly did a recalculation, figured we must be wanting to go home since it had already dutifully informed us a few minutes earlier that we had already arrived at the preset destination and so proceeded to bring us back to San Ramon. So round and round the town of Hayward we went and I grumbled that a simple miss always lead us to make long detours because Nuvi NEVER recommends a U-turn. Yet despite my obvious displeasure with the gadget, it was unbelievable how obedient we were to its instructions. Until it told us to go on the ramp and take 580East. Only then did we realise what was happening! How absurd.

So I reset the dummy and off we head back to CSU, pretty much covering the same route we took just 20 minutes earlier. Oh the wasted time, miles and gas (at $3.70+ a gallon)! To make ourselves happier after the silly episode, we stopped at a little dingy little Indian restaurant at the base of the hill that leads to the campus. And don't let the look deceive you, the food was pretty good.

Feeling satisfied now that our tummies were filled, we went up the hill, reached the parking lot stated on the agenda from CalHigh and Nic went to change. And the occasion? The CMEA Band Festival. What it is is an annual competition among high school bands. CalHigh entered all 3 bands - concert, symphonic and wind ensemble - led by the teacher, Kent Johnson. Good looking gentleman, if a bit on the short side. And I must say, he conducts well, better than some of the other teachers. And the CalHigh teams were all exquisite. They were all so well dressed, the boys looking sharp in their tux like suits and the girls in their long black gowns. The best looking teams. While most of the other schools did dress in their band outfits, none of them were as formally dressed as our bunch. Mr Johnson himself was very trim and neat.

While hanging around outside the Music & Business Building for the event to start, who did we meet but Keng and Calvin coming for the same event. So we ended up spending the evening with Keng since Calvin is in the same symphonic band as Nic. This being familiar territory to him and we being newbies to the game, Keng was like a shepherd guiding us through the events for the next couple of hours.

Parents were allowed to attend the performances in the university Performance Theatre so from 7:30 pm we sat through some of the school performances and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves (at least I did). They were all pretty good. All of them. Mr Johnson's selection of pieces was quite interesting and seems to be a pattern with him because the wind ensemble performances later in the evening had the same signatures. The first piece would be fairly long and difficult, the second would be really challenging and had some of the kids also singing a few stanzas and the final piece would be the rah rah kind that just has the entire band playing with no breaks in between, kind of like a rousing finale.

Then we trooped back to the Music & Business Building to see how the symphonic band would do on sight reading. I must say it was quite an experience. I had not seen Singapore school bands being put through sight reading competitions before. Mr Johnson was given a limited amount of time to go through the piece which the band was not allowed to see until they were told to open the packet. In that time, he had to quickly explain how they should all play and that was all the time they had to understand the piece. I was fascinated with how Mr Johnson went through the entire piece line by line counting the beats hitting on key areas like crecendos and the kids actually understood even at the speed he was going. After the performance, the invigilator (apparently they are called proctors in the US - this I learnt from my ITIL class on Monday and Tuesday) critiqued the band's performance, beginning with some advice about the best way to perform sight reading using an interesting car wash analogy, then pointing out where the group had not done as well as they could have and praising those areas and sections where they did well. It was impressive. That in that short amount of time, this person could hear and discern so much.

And the end result? CalHigh Symphonic Band had ratings of ESSSE (excellent, superior, superior, superior, excellent) on the 5 dimensions all bands were scored on (forgive me, I cannot recall what these criteria are, except the last E which was for sight reading). No G which is the only other rating - for good which is below E and S. One of the best scores for the symphonic bands. For pictures, please see album to the right. But here is one of Nic in her gown.