Entry #8 Spanish Music and Games

 Hello for today I am in class during Max Gradisher's presentation. He is presenting a lot of music from different cultures and countries. He presented two pieces one by Rafael Mendez from Mexico and one by the tenThing Brassensemble playing Carmen Suite by Bizet. With the Carmen Suite taking place in Spain, that draws a connection between these two pieces of sharing the Spanish Language, so the theme of today's blog is Spanish Music.

The first piece was composed by Rafael Mendez for him and his twin sons Rafael and Robert all playing trumpet. The piece is called Tre-Mendez Polka. Rafael Mendez is known for his incredible range and technique. He has recorded and popularized many pieces such as La virgen de la Macarena and Flight of the Bumblebee. 

The second piece is by Georges Bizet. He wrote his Carmen in 1875, it is an opera based in Southern Spain, the story follows a solider and Carmen through their love and trials. Tine Thing Helseth a Norwegian trumpet player arranged this recording for the tenThing Brassensemble. This ensemble was founded by Tine Thing Helseth, it is a ten piece all female brass ensemble. They are celebrated for their great outreach and diverse repertoire. 

Finally for today's board game, I picked a game that although is not from Spain or Mexico, it is from Puerto Rico, so the rules are in Spanish, so i thought it would match the vibe of today's post. Puerto Rico is a complicated game where players take turns assuming different roles such as farmer, mayor, builder, artisan and captain. When you are a certain role, you either build farms, put workers on the farms, build buildings, make goods or sell goods for either money or points. Each of the buildings helps you either get more goods, or more points, or more money to buy more buildings. The game requires a lot of strategy, as there is a lot of options of buildings, farms and goods to chose from. Chose correctly and you might just win.

I hope you enjoy today's music and get a chance to play Puerto Rico.

Entry #7 Private Eye and Memes

 Hello everyone, for todays post, I am live blogging from Brady Gell's presentation. His blog is called Brass Music in the Public Eye. His presentation is about different composers and musicians of different brass instruments who write and perform music to be shared in a public setting, or better put, because all music is meant to be shared, these musicians go out of their way to make music accessible to everyone, whether it be from free concerts, or social media!

Brady shared a playlist with multiple songs, but one that I wanted to highlight was Christopher Bill's video. Christopher Bill is a famous Youtube Trombone Player, He publishes videos of him playing the trombone, and playing pop music and different fun arrangements. In this video Christopher Bill recorded 60 trombone players playing an arrangement of his called I will survive by Gloria Gaynor. Christopher Bill is great at advocating for brass players, and using social media to promote his love of music and the trombone.

For today's game, going hand in hand with social media, I picked a game that is based on social media. The game is called What do you Meme. It is a game where one player picks an image, and then other players pick a caption, the judge then tries to match the best caption with the image, whoever matches the funniest meme wins. 

Memes are a great way to spread content over social media. Whereas most memes are funny, some can be informative, and when it comes to promoting brass music, using memes as a platform to reach all ages and all cultures can be super beneficial. So I hope you enjoy todays music and play What do you meme!

Entry #6 Tomasi and Carcassonne France

 

Carcassonne is a city in Southern France, that is fortified, as seen in the picture above, Seeing this, brings one back to medieval times with castles. I'll touch more on this later, but the theme for today's post is France and the beauties therein.

Henri Tomasi was a French composer and conductor. He has written many works for a variety of different instruments. As a brass player, I am familiar with a lot of his music for brass, and on the topic of Brass, here is Henri Tomasi's Fanfares Liturgiques. The score along with the video is below. This work is for a large brass ensemble, with three trumpets, four horns, three trombones, one bass trombone and tuba, along with some percussion parts. This piece was written in 1947 as a part of Tomasi's Opera Don Juan de Mańara. There are four movements, they are titled, Annunciation, Gospel, Apocalypse and Good Friday Procession. This is an exciting piece, with a beautiful trombone solo. 

Returning back to Carcassonne, there is a board game called Carcassonne that is an opportunity for players to build their own fortified city images after the city in France. Each player takes turns placing tiles, that they obtain randomly, and when placed, the player may choose to place down either, travelers, farmers, knights or monks, each that earn certain points depending on the tile placed. You only have a limited amount of pieces to play, so use them wisely, and make sure that you claim big slots of land before your opponent, or else you will be left with little land and few points. 

I hope you enjoy this work by Henri Tomasi. It truly is beautiful and whether or not you play the game, listen to the piece, it will be worth your time!!