50 Years of Music in Gainesville

I turned 40 this weekend, which is a bit of a mind-blowing experience. It so happens, that this same weekend was the 50th Anniversary Celebration for the Gainesville Community Band (GCB), so I went to the concert as part of my birthday celebration as well. I played in the GCB for about 5 years a while ago, before work schedules interfered. When my work schedule changed so I could go to rehearsal again, I quickly found out that my stamina was no longer up for 2 hour music practices1 and I had to finally quit for real. This made me very sad, as it was something I did with my mother (she continues to play in the band), and also kept me playing my clarinet on a regular basis. It was also just plain fun. Some of my favorite memories are from band rehearsals and concerts, and GCB is no exception.

The Concert yesterday was a typically wonderful experience, even if I had to watch from the audience instead of sitting on stage with everyone else. The current conductor, R. Gary Langford is great fun to play music for, as well as an expert at working an audience. He’s my second favorite conductor I’ve ever played for, only surpassed by my high school Band Director who was exceptionally cool and gave me a lot of great opportunities. Gary is a bit of a card, and can be counted on to both dress exceptionally snazzily and tell many jokes between pieces.

The concert was a bit of a walk through musical eras, with such favorites as Blue Tango, St Louis Blues, Grease, and ending with a patriotic sing along of From Sea to Shining Sea. Before St Louis Blues Gary demonstrated a jazz improvisation on his trumpet, which I was able to capture below.

https://youtube.com/shorts/auOVKTCHDic?feature=share

Along the way, the band also played a tune called The Old Grumbly Bear, which featured one of the bassoonists soloing on a contra-bassoon, an exceptionally funny instrument. It plays the lowest note in the orchestra, getting as low as the lowest note on a 64 foot pipe organ. Below is just the first 15 seconds of the piece showing the contrabassoon, but you can also listen to a previous performance of the piece in its entirety on my YouTube. The video is just of my leg in that one, but the audio is pretty good still.

https://youtube.com/shorts/EjpemsM3u5Q?feature=share

The crowning point of the concert though was a piece that Gary commissioned one of his former students and a former member of the band to compose & guest conduct, called Tree City Triptych. This concert was the piece’s World Premiere, and it was lovely. The band did a stellar job of performing it, and the piece was really beautiful. To quote part of the program notes for the piece

Tree City Triptych, a three-movement piece, is based on a motive derived from the band’s three initials, “GCB.” Those three pitches appear as the melody which begins the first movement of the piece, “Sojourn.” This motive reappears many times over the course of the composition in its original form, but also inverted (as in “Solace,” the second movement) and also in retrograde. In the third movement “Sonare,” the motive is transposed to the key of E-Flat, the relative major of C minor, the key of the opening movement.

There is a full video of the piece below. Dr Chris Sharpe, the composer and conductor for this piece, is an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Lynchburg (Virginia). I think his musical talent really shines through in this piece as well. He has said he drew inspiration for the piece from the band itself, the city of Gainesville, and from a well-known piece of music called Men of Florida.

https://youtu.be/5pJRyjSK3s8

Overall, it was a lovely way to celebrate my birthday. Afterwards my family and one of my closest friends went out for Indian food at a really nice new restaurant in town. Sometimes, living in Gainesville is good, actually.

#aboutMe #communityBand #concertBandMusic #concertBands #GainesvilleFL #music

Hi, I’m Eddie 👋
I’m an indie developer 🧑‍💻
I’m building Virtual Controller, it’s open source and turns your iPhone into retro game controllers 🎮

I plan to share my progress here

#IndieDev #RetroDev #GameDev #RetroGaming #MacGaming #iOSGaming #Apple #iOS #Mac #SoloDev #OpenSource #Emulation #AboutMe

🗞️ In the noble quest for SEO dominance and obscure digital glory,
I’ve planted a fresh backlink to my studio site:

🔗 https://about.me/foxandthistle.studio

Crawlers welcome. Bots encouraged. Humans optional.

cc:
@mastobot

@FediFollows

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I have a poodle. He accidentally said "hello" once when yawned. It sounded so much like real speech that it gave me the creeps, like someone had sneaked into my apartment. I started searching the flat for intruders, but then he yawned again and I realized what happened.

#randomfacts #aboutme #poodle #dogsofmastodon

Scifi Saturday!

Here is a list of my science fiction related posts and activities for the past week (or so)!

https://readbeanicecream.surge.sh/2025/05/10/scifi-saturday/

#blogging #blog #indieweb #smolweb #smallweb #personalweb #books #movies #podcasts #fediverse #pixelfed #loops #bookwyrm #scifi #sciencefiction #aboutme