Classical Concert

On Sunday, July 26, 2009 I went with my parents to a classical concert. The performers were a collection of some of the finest college musicians, alumni in the Southland and beyond, band directors, high school students, and several university instrumental faculty members. They were a wind orchestra. The conductor was Jeff Held who is a professor at Concordia University. There was also a solo singer who participated in a handful of the songs as well. Her name was Natalie Hovsepian. The concert was in Irvine, California at Concordia University. Concordia University is a private Lutheran college university that I attend. The concert itself was called Concert on the Green. This was perhaps because the concert was held outdoors and the audience was organized to sit on the green grass on campus. The time of the concert was at 4:00pm. It was over around 6:00pm. Concert on the Green is an annual concert that Concordia does every summer. The one that I went to was the finale of a series of concerts that this wind orchestra had been performing throughout the summer.

Jeff Held is officially classified as the Director of Instrumental Activities and Assistant Professor of Instrumental Music at Concordia University in Irvine, California. He is also a conductor of the Concordia Wind Orchestra. In addition, Held is a classroom and online professor. He teaches courses in music history, music appreciation, orchestration, and instrumental music education. Held is currently a candidate for D.M.A. in music education at Boston University. He is a graduate of the American Band College at Southern Oregon University, Valparaiso University, and Concordia University. Held is also Vice-President of the Board of Directors of Lutheran Music Program. Personally, Held has a wife, Holly, and two young children whose names are Sam and Amy.

Natalie Hovsepian is a senior Music Education major at Concordia University in Irvine, California. She is president of the Concordia Choir and coordinates the CUI high school choral festival and coaches a club volleyball team at Saddleback Valley Volleyball Club. Hovsepian is also involved in the woman's acapella group at CUI and is a member of the Concordia University percussion ensemble. She states that the thing she is most excited for in life is pursuing Christ faithfully, relentlessly, and unconditionally until she gets to meet him face to face.

The concert was very relaxing. At first the weather was fairly warm, but then it cooled down a little bit. Towards the end of the concert, I could feel more of the cool ocean breeze. Some of the instruments used in the concert were accordions, clarinets, drums, flutes, tubas, trombones, cymbals, and xylophones. The pieces that were performed were The Star-Spangled Banner, American Salute, Adagio for Winds, Laudamus Te (Mass in C Minor, K427), Arioso (Cantata No. 156), Canticle: All Creatures of Our God and King, Overtude to "Candide", Klezmer Classics which included Mazltov, Dem Trisker rebn's nign, Lomir zich iberbetn, Chosidle (slow dance), and Ma jofus (Tants, tants, Jidelech). Other pieces included Block M (Concert March), The Lion King: Circle of Life, I Just Can't Wait to Be King, Be Prepared, Hakuna Matata, Can You Feel the Love Tonight and King of Pride Rock. The final pieces were I Dreamed a Dream (Les Miserables), Old Ironsides, The Ultimate Patriotic Sing-Along, and Star Wars Medley. There was also an intermission. During this intermission, there were games that kids could play and they could win prizes. Also, for the song Block M, the conductor taught the kids how to conduct it so as the wind orchestra performed, the kids conducted it along with the conductor. The concert involved the kids a lot.

The dynamics of the songs varied. They never really stayed the same throughout each song. This means that the volume varied from soft to loud or from loud to soft. This kept the songs interesting to listen to because it was hard to know what was coming next. The range of sound in each song kept the songs mysterious and entertaining. The beats were not repetitive at all in the songs. The beats changed throughout the song but they carried over nicely with each other. In some of the songs, the texture was thin. This means there was one voice. The songs whose texture was thin were the ones in which Hovsepian sang. She had a solo part in some of the songs. She sang soprano in each song she sang. This means that she sang in the highest singing voice that she possibly could. She sounded very nice. She sang while the orchestra played at the same time. None of the songs had texture that was thick. This means that none of the songs had multiple voices singing in them. The only voice that was ever heard throughout the whole classical concert was Hovsepian's. There was rhythm in every song. It varied. The rhythm never really stayed the same. Sometimes it was fast and other times it was slow. It was very hard to predict how the rhythm would turn out to be as each song continued to play.

The Triumph of Music: Introduction

There was a Party at the Palace hosted by Queen Elizabeth in 2002. The concert peformed there was called the Jubilee concert. There was plenty of food and drink that was consumed. 200 million people worldwide watched it on television. The concert was put on DVD and millions of more people have watched it on that. Brian May performed "God Save the Queen" on the roof of Buckingham Palace.

Here is a clip of Brian May performing "God Save the Queen" on top of Buckingham Palace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4nsifplvpk

At the top of this blog, that is a picture of Buckingham Palace and the picture below it is of Brian May performing "God Save the Queen" on top of Buckingham Palace.

Jazz Concert

On Friday June 18, 2009 I went with my parents to a jazz concert. The perfomer was a saxophonist named Mindi Abair. The concert was in Newport Beach, California at Hyatt Regency. Hyatt Regency is the name of a fancy hotel. The concert was held outdoors. The time of the concert was at 8:00pm. This concert was part of the Wave's Summer Jazz Series held at Hyatt Regency. The Wave is a jazz radio station.
Abair was born May 31, 1969. She is 40 years old now. She is married. She is an American smooth saxophonist. She has a top-40 pop music background. She has performed with people such as Mandy Moore and the Backstreet Boys. She has appeared in their tours as well. Always and Never the Same is the name of her album that she released while on tours with these people. However, then in 2003, Abair decided to change to jazz and give it a try. This move turned out to be a good one. She has been nicknamed "the second coming of Candy Dulfer." Some of her songs are titled "Lucy's," "Flirt," and "Save the Last Dance". She performed all of these songs at the concert that I went to with my parents. "Save the Last Dance" takes its name from the movie with Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas in it. Abair will occasionally sing in some of her songs too. Evidence of this is her vocal cover version of the Eagle-Eye-Cherry hit "Save Tonight" on her debut album. She titled a song "True Blue" and released that in 2006. In addition to singing and playing the saxophone, Abair plays the flute and keyboard. However, she did not play these instruments at the concert. She just stuck to the saxophone and singing. About midway through the concert, though, Abair switched to another saxophone that she decided to play. Abair played with a total of 2 different saxophones throughout the entire concert. She sang in some of her songs too and others she just played the saxophone. She performed with a band that she tours with. There was a drummer and he played the drums and cymbals. There were a couple guys that played the guitar. One guy played an electric guitar. There was another guy that played the keyboard. Abair is also the host of a radio program. This radio program is called Chill with Mindi Abair. This program focuses on chill out music.
The concert was very relaxing. There was a cool breeze from the beach so it was actually pretty cold outside, but it still felt good. The beats were kind of repetitive sometimes in the songs but each song had a different beat and they were all catchy so they were interesting. There were some interesting dynamics in the songs. In some of them, the volume started off very soft, and then it slowly kept getting louder and louder and then reached its loudest point and then went back slowly down to being soft again and ended at its softest point which it began from. In other songs, the dynamics stayed the same which means the volume stayed the same and did not change. The texture of the songs varied as well. Sometimes the texture was thin. This means there was one single voice and that voice was Abair when she was singing solo in some of her songs. Other times the texture was thick because the other band members sang along with Abair at the same time. There was rhythm in every song. It varied as well. Sometimes the rhythm was repetitive. Other times the rhythm would pick up and be very fast and catch the audience's attention and get them out of their seats and start dancing and get in a happy mood. There was one moment in the concert when Abair let the drummer play solo and he showed off all of the different rhythms he could do. He would drum fast beats, slow beats, and in between and his dynamics of the rhythms would vary too so that is what kept it interesting to listen to. Abair would let each band member show off their instrument and use their different rhythms and dynamics with it so the audience could hear the differences of all the instruments. Abair did a really good job of keeping the concert filled with a lot of variety and not just her singing or using the saxophone all the time. All of the three basic forms were used in the concert: repetition, variation, and contrast.