I manage to sleep until the alarm goes off (still, 7:30 is early for me) and realize that the conference is now on the downhill side. A moment of sadness passes until I realize that there are still almost three full days to go.

After breakfast, the first session scheduled in "Keys to a happy and healthy horn section" by the RSO horn section. Since I already have one of those ;-) it's time to hit all the vendors that I did not hit the previous two days. A few of them recognize my name; still, nobody offers me anything free, and before I know it over $100 has been spent on various music and junk. Budget blown, I head down to a panel on the music of Alec Wilder.

Wilder was a resident of Rochester, if he could be said to truly reside anywhere. He lived out of a couple of suitcases and frequently shuttled via train from Rochester to New York City. He wrote an incredible number of works after spending a very short time at Eastman and driving his counterpoint instructors crazy. He made a habit of writing works for people for nothing, amazingly enough!

I can't summarize the whole discussion here and do it justice, but there were three friends of Wilder present to honor his memory. Thomas Hampson is a local lawyer and gave a brief biographical sketch, including the information above. Louis Ouzer, the official photograper of the Eastman School of Music, credited Wilder with saving his life and setting him on the path that has seen him work at Eastman over 60 years. Morris Secon is a hornist for whom Wilder wrote many works. All three obviously had fond memories of Wilder, but Hampson, after having his (long) say, showed impatience with the others that I did not appreciate. After the remembrance, several works of Wilder were performed by Sarah Bach (recent Eastman graduate), Kristin Thelander, Virginia Thompson, and Morris Secon himself. Secon closed with a very touching song that he read in Wilder's memory.

After lunch, I decide to forgo the trip to the Erie Canal in order to play for about three hours down in the TV room. There are some seriously good players in this group. A young college player sits next to me and makes me feel like a real klutz. I haven't played this much probably since high school, and for some reason my chops hold up today. People will probably be asking me if I practised at our next band concert (Sunday).

It's time for our picnic and concert, and we pile into seven school buses to head to Ontario Lake Park. Much to my surprise, this concert is open to the public. The repertoire is seriously classical and I have a feeling that they are about to hear something other than what they expect.

Various works are performed - starting with the Overture to Oberon (in a funky key), "Villanelle" (Soichiro Ohno, soloist), Mercadante's "Concerto for Horn" (WP Band's SSgt Harry Ditzel), "Invitation to a Voyage" and the fun "Variation on Haydn's Theme", both by Froydis Ree Werke. Almost uniformly throughout the crowd is restless - we have a clown next to us who talks throughout and says how much he hates the music (thankfully he leaves at the break). About 35% of the crowd leaves at intermission, unfortunately. This does leave better viewing for the rest of us, and since the audio is not picking up the horn soloists too well, we can move a bit closer.

The second half includes Handel's "Concerto for Two Horns" (Lisa Bontrager and SSgt LaDonna Swetnam), Glzounov's "Reverie, Op. 24" and Saint Saens' "Romance, opus 36" (Shelly Showers), and the Konzertstuck, with Kendall Bets, Charles Kavalovski, Soichiro Ohno, and Froydis Ree Werke. What an all-star team! The closing scheduled number is the well-known band horn feature, "American Overture for Band," with all the soloists sitting in the horn section. Other than doing what every horn section since the piece was written does - cracking the opening G-G octave jump - it goes great ;-) As an encore, we get Stars and Stripes Forever .. but wait, who's that stand for? Yes, after doing the Konzerstuck and American Overture, Kendall Betts comes up with an incredibly tiny Bb descant and proceeds to play the piccolo solo in the last strain .. in the piccolo octave (whatever, it was all ledger lines and lots of them). For the repeat, the entire horn section comes to center stage and plays the trombone line while Kendall plays the picc line. The crowd surges around the stage and screams its approval. As a band musician, I've wanted to hear someone do this for a long, long, time!

We head back. Some people go to the recital by John Clark and friends, a jazz recital; I head downstairs to enter these notes and try to get a group to play with. Mission one accomplished; mission 2, tbd.

Respectfully Submitted,
Your Roving Reporter, Ron