Festival

On April 20th I observed the Willow Creek/ Harrison band’s performance at music festival. The group performed for Jay Smith and Rob Wells. They played in the Willson School gymnasium, which has at least a 4 second reverberation. Because of this the bands sounded very muddy. The band played Willow Creek Overture for their first number, which was conducted by Sandy Mabbit, the Harrison High School band director. Her stand was so high her arms were conducting at head level. The next piece was Brandenburg March which was conducted by Bill Frank of Willow Creek. Because of limited instrumentation,the band used alto saxes to double trumpet parts. The group sounded very good, but the gym caused the group to lack clarity. Jay Smith worked with the band. He talked more about the acoustics of the gym and constantly asked the students if they liked band instead of working with the group. The sight reading portion of the performance went very quickly in an effort to get groups back on schedule as they were running about 25 minutes behind.