ANCOC Day 8

Testing day.

The morning started out with a student recital comprised of the various small groups. Our horn quartet borrowed (OK, stole) the name "Could be Wurst" from the 234th's Polka Band. We did that because the music we had during our early rehearsals was a set of short German horn quartets. Then we (they) hatched the idea that we could simulate playing at an Oktoberfest celebration. Things started to get REALLY crazy after that ... our "costume" was made up of rolling our ACU pants up to our knees to expose our long green socks with class A (patent leather) dress shoes. It was supposed to make people think of lederhosen, but most seemed to think it was a St. Patrick's Day thing. Someone else brought huge beer steins, into which I placed my water bottle.

Each of us took a turn speaking to the crowd, making self introductions and a bit of humor. The MST leader went first, and talked about the undeserved (or deserved) reputation of horn players being heavy beer drinkers, and how that tied into our theme. The next soldier gave her name, announced that she liked to drink beer and take long walks on the beach. I told the crowd that when the group first found out I was NOT a drinker, they wondered whether I was an authentic horn player and displayed outright mistrust - until they realized they would never have to take turns being the designated driver. Each of those bits of dialog was followed by several short folk tunes or horn calls.

The final section turned out quite well. Our last player engaged the crowd of Army musicians by asking what horn players were known for. We eventually got them to say "offbeats." They were instructed to NAME THAT MARCH based only on the offbeats played by our horn section. We were armed with Tootsie Rolls (a gimmick by one of the BNCOC instructors) for whoever came up with the correct march name first. To my surprise, NOBODY guessed the march - Americans We - even after two of our players played some euphonium cues. We finished out by starting the trio of Stars and Stripes, which they eventually DID get and sang along to the end.

The other groups were quite creative and entertaining, and it was a fun start to the day.

We were given some time to work on our final essays, and then turned loose for lunch.

Afterwards we gathered for our military ceremonies evaluation. We set up a parade field inside part of the gymnasium, and while some students played the roles of company commanders, adjutant, reviewing officer, etc., others were in the band the person being evaluated was the bandmaster. The whole sequence took about 15 minutes. EACH. THERE ARE SEVENTEEN OF US IN THE CLASS !!! After four hours we were all pretty much beat. But I think everyone passed, which is a good thing.

My computer is melting down so I spent some time on the phone with IT back in Corvallis, rebooted many many times, and (obviously) finally got it limping along. Tomorrow morning we have auditions, and then nothing until after lunch, so I'm hoping I can get caught up a bit on some music library work and other things on my machine. Fingers crossed.

I did spend a couple of hours in a practice room, but there isn't much I can do now to be prepared for the morning audition. It's too late to really work on all those scales, so I'll just have to do whatever I can do. Hopefully the solo and sight reading will go well. Again, fingers crossed.

The next post will be made after the final scored event, so hopefully it will contain some happy info!