Even though I am not majoring in music, I've played the clarinet since sixth grade and really wanted to continue with it at Coe. Lucky for me, Coe has a great music department with lots of opportunities available to both majors and non-music majors. For this post, I'm just going to discuss my first semester experience and hopefully in a future post I'll discuss more music related options and opportunities.
Music takes place in Marquis, directly across the quad from the library. I spent a good amount of time there this past semester both for Concert Band and practicing for my private clarinet lessons. Concert Band met on Mondays from 4:30 PM to 6:15 PM and on Wednesdays from 7:00 PM to 9:15 PM. There were some times when those rehearsals were a little long but we did play some challenging music this semester. Here's a link to a song we played for our Homecoming showcase called New World Variations. Since it's a long video, fast forward to 4:00 minutes to hear us play.
Speaking of concerts, we had three this past semester. The first one was our Homecoming Showcase concert and we teamed up with the choirs, orchestra, and jazz band for this one. The second was a preview concert at a high school where the band director is a Coe alumni. Finally, we had our Fall Concert (along with the Jazz Band). Concert Band is open to anyone, music and non-music majors and the band also has community members and alumni which is a neat aspect. I met some people and became close with the other two clarinetists who played third clarinet with me.
When I was not in Marquis for band rehearsals, I was either having a lesson or practicing for it. I took private clarinet lessons with Dr. Carson (who is also the Concert Band director) because I had never taken private clarinet lessons before and I wanted to improve my playing. I had a half hour lesson and I had a lesson each week. There are two other components of taking private lessons: seminars and a jury. Seminars are one hour a week and it's where you meet with your professor and the other students who are studying privately with that professor. For my seminar it was myself, Dr. Carson and four other clarinet students. We played music, discussed elements of the clarinet and also performed for each other as our juries approached. A jury is where you play for a panel of music faculty so they can see your progress over the semester. You play the piece you've been practicing for the past 14 weeks and they give you feedback. For my first jury, I played excerpts from Concertino by Faber which was a challenging piece but I had such a great feeling at the end of the semester when I could play it well. In my jury and all the practicing time leading up to it, I could hear my improvement over the semester and that really kept me going and motivated. The other part of the jury is that you have to find your own accompanist because a piece really does sound better with backup. You do have to pay your accompanist but it's worth it; my accompanist was a fellow first year named Gina (who happens to live across the hall from some friends of mine). She was fabulous and it has been decided she will be my accompanist for the rest of my clarinet career at Coe. So that was nice.
And that's my first semester of music at Coe. I hope it gave you some insight into I did the first semester on the clarinet. Again, if you have any questions about music here at Coe, let me know because I'll ask one of my music friends and get back to you. Just leave me a comment! :)
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