It’s taken me a week to process everything that happened last Sunday. To say that I am proud of you is an understatement of immense proportions. The focus, energy, drive, and grit you brought to the presentation of Husa’s milestone work was amazing.

The Facebook webcast was tremendously successful, and we reached over 400 viewers beyond the Music Hall. Thank you so much to Jim Savage for manning both my phone for  the webcast, and my DSLR for the video of the concert. I would never recommend a livestream of a concert that might reduce paid patronage, but in this case it made a huge difference with our exposure to the broader wind band community. The video will remain on the WSW Facebook page, where you can find it if you’re interested. I’m working on publishing the video shot with my DSLR, for which I’m adding titles and captions for the movements. That will be found on our YouTube channel when completed and uploaded.

Was the Husa perfect? Of course not. But it was deeply emotional, extremely musical and so effective. Your response to the excerpts during the introduction made it much more accessible to the listeners. It was transformational in many ways. I truly believe that you are better players for the experience, but also better people. The empathy involved in preparing this piece could not result in anything less. In many ways, it’s clear to see the development of this ensemble influenced greatly by the Bolcom last season, the Daugherty in November, and now the Husa. What we do next to develop our mutual musicianship and engage our audiences will be heavily influenced by our experiences with this rehearsal cycle and performance. This is not to say that I will be programming a steady diet of this strata of works, but it will serve us so well for our continuing growth.

I”m very proud of Kelly Oram’s work with the Jacob. The band really responded to him with a very musical performance. I’m also grateful to Don Batchelder for performing these two classic solos with us, and for his amazing master class in January. Your response to Keith Hodgson was tremendous; I was especially moved by your applause reception for him when he came to the podium on Sunday at the sound check. He sent a letter of thanks which I will share at our next rehearsal.

The Fillmore march got us off to a great start, and Travis Cross’s Tribute was the perfect introduction to Prague. I was energized by the audience reaction to a la Machaut! Not only was the applause warm and sustained, but so many audience members who spoke to me afterward specifically mentioned how much they enjoyed the piece.

Enjoy one more week off until I see you all again on Monday, February 26. The rehearsal plan is already posted! I have allowed for some time to reflect and debrief the concert at the beginning of rehearsal. And then, as usual, we will read through the entire Spring program.

Thank you to each and every one of you. I am so proud to be associated with you all.

PS – If you are an Amazon Prime subscriber, catch my scene-stealing performance in Season Four of Mozart in the Jungle. (This photo is from episode 9. I was also an extra for an additional episode — featuring a performance for the Pope — but I haven’t found it yet!)