For the past year, I have been playing with a wind quintet with some friends from church, and we had a fabulous performance this weekend. I am so proud of how great we sound in these videos, but also for how far we’ve come since we began. With the exception of our flute players, we all had come from significant lapses since we last played. I hadn’t played in the 10 years since I graduated high school, but, through regular practice and some lessons, have grown significantly from where I was then. I would never have been able to play these pieces in high school, and have taken much joy from our experiences as a group. I hope that you enjoy listening to these pieces.
Our first piece on Sunday was “Solace” by Scott Joplin. This was such a fun piece to play with this group, and, as far as we can tell from our internet searches, we are the first wind quintet to put out any recording of this piece. Enjoy:
Next, we played “Pavane pour une infant défunt” by Maurice Ravel. This was a great piece to show our journey as a quintet. None of us had played for such a small, un-conducted group before, and this piece in particular was quite a challenge for us – it was an amazing train wreck the first time we played it together. We stuck with it, and made a lovely show of it this week:
We closed out the service with “Hornpipe” from Handel’s Water Music.
I am happy for the privilege to play with this group, and I hope that we can continue to find fun music to play together.