As you may or may not be aware, I am a music major at SUU. I play the trumpet. So I am in this brass studio class and 3 times a semester, we've got to play a solo piece for the class. I have played one time so far (until today) and there is only one class left! So today I played for the second time. I did not have any other solos I had been working on besides the one I had already played. So I had a plan! My music theory class was canceled today to give us time to "work on our final projects". But instead, I used that time at 10am to visit the music library at the school and find a solo to play. I found a piece called Prayer of Saint Gregory. I have heard the piece before so I knew pretty much how it went. I checked out the music from the library at 10:15am and jetted over to the music building. I knew that the music theory class would be vacant due to the fact that class was canceled, so I let myself in there with my trumpet and this new music. I played through it a couple of times on the trumpet, then a couple of times on the piano (so I could still hear how it is supposed to sound with out blowing my chops) and then a couple more times on my trumpet. I thought I had it down pretty good. So at about 10:50am, I started to head over to the brass studio class to perform my newly learned piece. I sat down and waited for class to begin. I was the first one to perform. So I told everyone what I was going to play, took a large breath, and began. It was sounding pretty great, considering the small amount of time that I allotted myself to work on it. Usually when the student finishes the performance in class, everyone claps and then brings up some comments such as "Oh, that was good, but you can improve on this... Maybe you can work on this... You could use a little more contrast here..." ect. But when I finished playing today, there were no comments like that! One person said "Great job." and another said, "good dynamics." That's it! They thought it was a pretty good performance. I did not tell any of them that I had never actually played the piece before, nor did I tell them that I just picked it up a half hour before class. Dr. Stickney, the band director asked me if I knew anything about the composer. I answered with an honest, "no. nothing." He suggested I look up things about the composer and that would help me find out a story to go along with why he wrote the piece. I guess the main point of my story is, no one knew that I had just learned the song and yet it still went very well! It was crazy! And quite honestly, it was a good feeling. :) That is all.
