Dallas Winds: A Dream Come True

I first heard of the Dallas Winds during my undergrad. It was while preparing to play chimes for La Fiesta Mexicana that I went in search of recordings. I came across a few, but as the album Fiesta! began, I found something that changed what I thought about large ensemble music. When the full brass section joins the horns around the 0:50 mark, I was transfixed. After that, I searched out any recordings I could find. And as years went on, I found myself returning to the albums to study more music and just enjoy the experience. One of my absolute favorites is the David Maslanka album Garden of Dreams which contains Symphony No. 4 (a work which happens to be the conduit for one of the most rewarding musical experiences I have had as a performer).

When I moved to Dallas in the fall of 2015, I found my teaching schedule filling up but playing was almost non-existent. Being the new person in an area is challenging as a musician. People don't know you or your abilities. It's hard to break in. It took 6 months and the help of local musician/all-around-awesome-person Drew Lang to get me in, and boy was that first in a doozy.

ERIC!

Not only was it a rehearsal with the Dallas Winds, it was a rehearsal of all Eric Whitacre's works for band with Eric conducting. I subbed that first rehearsal (coincidentally for someone that it turns out is from the area I had moved from and his high school band director and I are friends), and another player asked if I would be available to fill in for him the next day. Of course you say yes. So I excitedly returned the next day to sight read a new set of parts.

Freaking enormous hand crashes that DW owns. 24" I believe, maybe 26". I was winded.

As the next season began, I found myself returning for rehearsals for 3 more concerts, and then finally, on the next to last concert of the year, I was asked to play on the concert. BAM. About a year and a half after moving, I get to play in concert...with the Dallas Winds...on a concert of all John Mackey music. This proved to be especially meaningful as the final piece on the concert, The Frozen Cathedral, was written in memory of my college band director's late son. 

In the final cherry on top of the experience, a recording project has just been funded for us to record an album of all John Mackey music in August. So at the 2 year mark of having uprooted my life, I will at the very least be participating in something I never could have imagined happening all those years ago while sitting in the music library at UNCG, headphones on, with a stack of Dallas Winds albums.