The annual Pokorny Seminar wrapped up last night, it’s been a week full of music! Every year, world class tuba and trombone players come to teach a mixture of college age and older low brass players in an informal manner, with lots of ways to learn from these masters:
- Gene Pokorny, tuba, Chicago Symphony Orchestra
- Mike Roylance, tuba, Boston Symphony Orchestra
- Timothy Higgins, principal trombone, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
- Randall Hawes, bass trombone, Detroit Symphony
- Andrew Glendening, trombone, University of Redlands
- Scott Sutherland, tuba, University of Redlands and Presidio Brass
This started several years ago when hubby discovered that Gene Pokorny spent his first 2 undergraduate years at the University of Redlands and invited him to do a seminar. The first one was small but VERY well received, and so it has grown a bit and become this wonderful learning experience for low brass players, it certainly was instrumental (hah!) in Liam loving the trombone as much as he does!
Hubby played a recital on Monday night that was a mix of 2 traditional pieces, he was accompanied by the same awesome woman that accompanies Liam, Stephanie Lovell:
Yup, she’s wearing some Candied Fabrics! A couple years ago she had me make her a black orchid rayon wrap skirt, doesn’t she look lovely?
Hubby then played 2 new music pieces for trombone and electronics. They take a bit of explaining:
You can see Liam below the stage, he has to follow along and cue different sound effects at different points in time than process what Andrew’s playing in different ways:
Hubby’s been playing this type of music for a good 25 years now – what’s cool is it’s gone from being dismissed to appreciated in that time!
Right after Andrew, Scott Sutherland played a recital as well, here he is shaking Gene’s hand after they played a duet written for them by the Tubist of the Bejing Symphony, a Minnesotan named Mickey Roblesky who was at the seminar last year:
The next night were recitals by Gene and Randy, we missed that because Liam was playing at the Bowl. He got a really nice write-up in the Redlands Daily Facts, which included some excellent pictures:
Another reporter from the Riverside Press Enterprise wrote up a story about Liam playing at the Bowl then headed to Carnegie Hall, that was quite a nice surprise!
All of the participants of the seminar gathered on the stage of Memorial Chapel on Wednesday to play the Widor Tocatta with organ, it was truly magnificent! I took these pictures from the balcony:
And Greg Schneider took some incredible close-ups all over the group, here are a couple of my faves, gee I wonder why?
Finally, last night we had a Post Pokorny Pizza Party! It was so great to just hang out and de-compress! There were some moments full of laughter, but I didn’t capture them. But it is so great to see Liam laugh so exhuberantly with these wonderful musicians he looks up to!
I hope you have a great day today – ours will be spent packing up Liam for his NYO-USA residency and tour, he’s got to be at the airport at 5 tomorrow!!!!
One Response
You must be so proud of him! The write up was lovely – a tribute to his hard work and talent! And to your support of him! He’s going to be flying the nest pretty soon, isn’t he? The next stage has come so fast – it only seems like yesterday the pictures of him were of a little kid!