The end of the year at UC Irvine
It’s the end of the year at UC Irvine, and we made a couple of trips up there to see and hear Andy perform. I missed a couple of them when I was in the Bahamas, so I had to go to these, even if one of them seemed awfully short for a lot of driving.
The first was Wednesday night, and was a wind ensemble concert. No pictures, it looked a lot like the other concerts. It sure sounded better than the earlier concerts, though. A year of work made a lot of difference.
The second was Sunday, and we heard two back-to-back concerts by the Campus Band and the Stage Band. Since these had pretty much the same players and conductor, I wasn’t real clear on the distinction. The first half, the Campus Band played show tunes, from the William Tell Overture to selections from The Phantom of the Opera. It was fun, though I’ve never really cared a whole lot about Andrew LLoyd Webber. The second half was the Stage Band with a selection of popular songs from questionable sources. The best was I Wanna Be Like You, which is evidently from the Disney Jungle Book, but didn’t show it. I’d subtitle it “Fun with sound”.
After the concerts we got invited to watch a Clown Show. It seems that one of the upper level drama courses is in clowning, and they were going to show what they had learned. The performances were very short, ranging from very good to nothing much, but the enthusiasm of the performers let them carry off even the weak skits. I wish I’d had the camera for that one, but (see above). All in all, very much worth the travel.
