Posted by Rick Denney on February 15, 2001 at 12:45:05:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Practice Room posted by Tom B. on February 14, 2001 at 18:28:52:
Yeah, Randy is one of those occasional geniuses who come along to challenge the rest of us. He did arrangements for the Longhorn Band at the University of Texas at Austin, and I've played a number of them (but not in that group, heh, heh). They are some of the best arrangements I've ever played. His arrangement of Silverado glows in the dark.
When I moved to Dallas, many years after leaving Austin, I discovered him up there conducting a community band in a suburb (Coppell). I was invited to join that group, but my business travel made it impossible at the time, and I still regret that.
He understood that a community band will play about 90% of whatever music you put in front of them. The more challenging the music, the harder the musicians will work to achieve that 90%. Some conductors want 100%, so they program music within the abilities of the worst players in the group. They wonder why they never get the 100% they seek, and the reason is that the musicians are not motivated to practice. Under Randy, the ASB, an all-comers band with good musicians and a few that weren't so good, performed such works as the Giannini Variations and Fugue, Rocky Point Holiday, and several of the excellent Hindsley arrangements of orchestral works. We read down such works as Music for Prague, 1968 and the Hindemith Symphony for Band, but the naysayers in the group grew too loud and we didn't perform them. Too bad. The energy in the group after we performed the Giannini has never been matched before or since (at least until I left).
Rick "If you play the music, they will come" Denney