Sheer Brilliance

Bates Recital Hall had a golden glow. The chairs invited you to sit back and relax. The sound from the stage was perfect.

Down in front, Concert Band #3 was warming up: practicing snippets of their pieces, tuning up section by section, practice-hissing the music as the conductor directed.

When the lights were dimmed and the doors shut in the back and the performance began, they played three pieces: one based on the tomb of Tutankhamen, with hints of a caravan serai lumbering across the dunes and scarabs scuttling across the cold stone floor; another incorporating the audience with a loud shout of Ohio! at the end; and the final number a medly of Sousa marches.

You know Sousa. It is in our bones. We know it when we hear it. As my mother taught when I was young, If it makes you want to march, it's Sousa.

There they were playing Sousa on the stage with the lights shining brightly down on them, with parents watching their every move, with the director swinging her baton, with the silent pipe organ looming over them from its perch on the back wall.

The bass drum boomed. The tympani rolled. The flutes fluttered. The brass section stood up. Their sound filled the room. The trumpets blared the melody. The low brass washed against it.

They made us want to march. They made us proud.

...

Now have you ever listened to the low brass in a Sousa march? Have you ever put those trumpets and drums and fluttering flutes out of your mind and listened to the trombones and baritones and French horns and ... Sousaphones carry the counter melody?

Brilliance. Sheer brilliance.

Do it sometime. Listen to Sousa's background brass. I'm sure you'll agree. And I assure you that this has nothing to do with the fact that down there on stage, Ben was standing straight and tall, the bell of his horn held high, his slide snapping smartly in and out bringing tears to his father's eyes. No. It has nothing to do with that.

Brilliance. Sheer brilliance.

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UT Longhorn Music Camp, Austin TX

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