WMC Kerkrade

[tubeast]

Hello tubenetters,

just got home from the world music contest in Kerkrade, NL past Monday.
What an awesome experience ! We (Sinfonisches Blasorchester Vorarlberg, Austria) got there Friday morning for rehearsals and got to listen to our fellow contestants Saturday night. That was my first time at an occasion like that, and sure won´t be the last !!
Very intense playing from all bands.
Too sad I didn´t get to watch marching band contests or brass bands.
There was no time to roam the festival as the last twelve minutes of a comissioned piece had just arrived three days before (talk about hitting the practise room hard!). I sure would have enjoyed to get more of the athmosphere there and meet other musicians.

We had an interesting and quite diverse tuba lineup: 3x F (Cerveny, MW, B&S), 1x Eb (Besson), 1x C (B&S) and 2x BBb (Willson, Mirafone).
Getting all of those in tune was hard work, especially in Roda-hall, the location of the contest.
The fun part was that for each kind there were passages in our program that sounded best on that particular pitch, so we made use of that whenever tutti was not necessary.
I don´t think I ever breathed that much air during a one hour concert.
Repertoire: Variations on a Pentatonic Theme (R.Goorhuis, testpiece), Tiento del Primer Tono y Batallia Imperial (C.Halffter), Chakra (M.Hamers, premiere).
This hall is truly sound consuming, but was great to play at.

Anybody else been there last weekend ?

[Steve Marcus]

Anybody else been there last weekend ?

Not last weekend, but I played there July 9 and 10 in the Championship Section of the Brass Band Competition. The bands were incredible technically, musically, etc., despite the intense heat in the Rodahal!

On July 12, some of my bandmates and I attended the German Brass concert at the Rodahal. They are amazing!

Steve Marcus
Co-Founder, Tuba Section Leader, and BBb Bass
Chicago Brass Band