Banding Together

Tonight I'm reflecting on the end of Jacob's time with the Friendswood High School Wind Ensemble. Four years ago, they were named the Best Sit-Down Band in Texas when they received the Honors Band award. This year, they are eligible to try for that distinction again. So try they did. One of their audition pieces, a symphonic version of Verdi's Requiem, lasted 24 minutes. 

Twenty four minutes, 

one song, 

start to finish. 

Talk about perseverance and professionalism!

And every time I heard it, it would mesmerize and haunt me, and I couldn't help but wonder how that band director gets those teenagers to not only agree to learn, rehearse and then perfect a song that long, but also to want to perform it at the level at which they had mastered that masterpiece. 

I love that music inspires that kind of commitment to excellence.

Here now, a six-minute cut of a movement that happens 

to feature our favorite trumpet player and his friends:

Don't you just love what can happen 

when instrumentalists band together!