Day 3

g'day.    Things are going amazingly smoothly out here it seems--Kelly Thomas, Mark Nelson and their crew are doing a spectacular job keeping things running.  As always, when you give a performer 45 min, they will take an hour, and then the schedule spirals downhill, quickly, but they've built in decent enough lunch and dinner breaks that there can be a soft "reset" at those times.
Word has it there are currently 550-ish registered attendees for this week, which is fantastic!
The competitions are all over--spectacular playing at every level.  The one I was in charge of, Young Artist Tuba, had a maximum age of 18, so those performers really were performing outside their normal comfort zones--we had 10 in the semifinals and advanced 4 to the finals.  In looking back, I'm convinced that when I was that age, there was NO way I could've played like that.  Performance levels are going up--I wish we could take that kind of result on the road as inspiration to many others to show them what can be done (and should be expected!)
The performances in concert yesterday that I heard were all, well, good, as you might expect.  The Salt River Brass, under the direction of Pat Sheridan, played a great concert last night, although occasionally there were balance problems with a couple of the soloists in the "big, loud" spots.  The "advertised" soloists, Les Neish, David Childs and Steven Mead played as we would expect!  Then, there were "unadvertised" extras--Lance LaDuke (tbn/euph w Boston Brass) played/sang for us, and US Army trombonist extraordinaire Harry Watters played a couple of jazz tunes with the group.  And throughout the concert we all were "schooled" in ensemble playing by the great tuba section that included Sam Pilafian.  geez.

today should prove to be another great day of it.
(and I wound up being able  to sleep until 5:30 am today!!)
more to come........
dwa