A Mystic Day Off
Greetings, everyone! I’m writing to you today from a very gray and dreary Mystic, Connecticut. Even though the day is gray, I am not! Why? Well, today is in fact a “maintenance day” on our 2022 tour with the Marine Band.
What the heck is a maintenance day? Well, exactly like it sounds! Maintenance days, aka “a day off”, is a time to take care of things that we can’t do, or don’t have time to do, when we are constantly moving on tour. Laundry, rest, grocery shopping, exercise, and simply mental recharging are all things I look forward to on days like today. Well, ok, maybe not laundry… This morning finds me in a Starbucks next to our lovely hotel where I am simply enjoying sitting and catching up on some reading and thinking, hence this post.
I thought I would simply take the time to write a few significant events that have happened on tour, and tell you a little bit about our experiences on the road. This is the Marine Band’s first tour in 3 years due to the pandemic. It has been very successful so far - great crowds, excellent performances, and our featured soloists are really playing their hearts out and sound fantastic.
On stage at Carnegie Hall
Some serious musical highlights of this tour have come about due to acoustically special and/or historical venues we have had the chance to perform in. We played Carnegie Hall about a week ago, and it’s true that this historical and amazing venue never disappoints. As a musician, playing on that stage feels effortless. The acoustics of the hall are so complementary to what we do, that you feel as if your sound projects into the hall and audience with very little effort needed. Playing there feels like cycling with a tailwind! I also had the special pleasure of having my wife and boys in the audience. They made the trip up to hear the concert, and even got to visit an Amish family that we have become friends with in Chincoteague during the summer. Needless to say, I think they had a gamut of experiences that they won’t soon forget, to include driving a horse-drawn buggy, and riding “Amish scooters”.
Driving at age 14! :)
After Carnegie, we drove up to Worcester, Massachusetts, where we gave a performance at Mechanics’ Hall. Mechanics’ Hall was built in 1857, and the Great Hall is renowned for its excellent acoustics and as a concert space. It is indeed a beautiful hall, with excellent acoustics and a beautiful reverb. The Marine Band first performed there in 1891 when Sousa (director at the time) took the band there as part of our very first national concert tour. It is an exciting honor and connection to history to be back there with the modern version of the Band.
Mechanics’ Hall, Worcester, Massachussetts
A couple days after our Worcester concert, we had the chance to play at Symphony Hall in Boston, home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. That concert was full of special moments, not the least of which was having some friends from the BSO join us on stage towards the end of the concert. My friend, Steve Lange, was able to join us in the trombone section - Steve and I actually first played together in high school! Steve now plays second trombone in the BSO. We played the Great Gate of Kiev movement from Pictures at an Exhibition, plus a couple of patriotic tunes. Besides the timeliness of Mussorgsky’s work, the orchestra version of the piece (orchestrated by Ravel) was commissioned by Serge Koussevitsky in 1922 and first recorded by the BSO at Symphony Hall in 1930. That was another inspiring connection to bring to this concert!
Russell Sharp, Karl Johnson, Steve Lange, Chris Clark, and Tim Dugan onstage at Boston Symphony Hall
I’ve been enjoying quiet time in the hotels to do some audio mixing and editing on this tour. I’m at work on a few different albums (lots of trumpet!), as well as prep work for late fall concert recordings. I brought a Merging Technologies Anubis interface with me, and the D/A conversion sounds fantastic and is helping me make the most of my hotel mixing time. Sennheiser was helpful with providing a pair of HD-820 closed back headphones to me at a professional discount, and those are making all the difference with hearing detail in mixes and edits while out on the road.
Hotel mixing!
As always, thanks for reading! Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions. Home soon!