Sunday, July 15, 2012

"This one time at band camp..." and other adventures.

Hello everyone!

Sorry for taking so long between this post and my last one! 

This last week, I was camp counseling for the UNL Middle School band camp. It was a ton of fun, and it makes me happy to see how so many kids are excited about music. My duties included teaching a saxophone masterclass (with my good friend Michael), and teaching an elements class, which was basically a composition class. Also, I herded campers to where they needed to be, and stayed at the dorms to supervise them overnight. It was great seeing how vastly the kids improved playing their instruments in the short time we had, and how creative my elements class was, since they wrote 3 lines of music that were put on the final concert!

Plus, we had a ton of fun doing other stuff too... We threw a dance for the middle schoolers, and Michael and I got to play match-maker, and I attended my first middle-school dance (which, by the way, thanks to my fellow counselors, I had more fun at than almost all of my high school dances put together). We also played late-night sand volleyball against the counselors of the high school marching camp that was going on at the same time, and beat them for the first time in at least 4 years. It was also hilarious that the kids thought our fake lives were more interesting than our real ones, and by fake lives, they kept pairing the counselors off as boyfriend/girlfriend, or saying we were married to each other. I was either married to Michael by the end of the week or was his "Other woman" because he was married to one of the other counselors first. More embarrassingly, Michael and I somehow got coerced into playing some pop songs for the kids, and there are quite a few middle schoolers walking around with our voices as their ringtones. But, it was a really really great time, and I hope I get to do it again next year!

After all this madness, my cousin Jasmine came and visited me for a few days from Texas. It was super amazing, since I hadn't seen her in over a year in a half. We played music, hung out, and had fun until she left this afternoon. It was so good to see her and my Aunt Jean again this week, and it was a fantastic end to an amazing (and tiring) week. 

As for how I'm doing in general, I'm fine. I finished my last 2 summer classes with A's, and started a new one when camp started, which is Philosophy 106. And, by the way, my teacher is absolutely HILARIOUS. She's very intelligent and interesting, and oh my gosh, her one-liners and examples and stories during class don't make those 4 hour lectures seem bad at all. 

Musically, I'm in a jazz-indie band called Wind Armada that my counselor buddy from UNL high school jazz camp (Andrew Janak) invited me to be in, and, I gotta say, I'm really excited about how awesome of a group we have. The other guys (Drew, Kevin, Mike, and Michael) are just beyond talented, and I'm super lucky to get the chance to work with them. I mean, we're even doing a chart called "Great Lol of China." Just saying, we're awesome and funny and cool. No big deal. 

Also, I'm working on writing music. So many projects going on right now that I think I might explode, and I really hope I can get them done by the school year because once again, I way overloaded myself on how much stuff I need to write. But, hopefully hopefully hopefully I'll have more time to be composing because I'm only taking one class now instead of two.

ONE MORE THING: I'm tutoring people for ACT English and Reading. Also, giving composition lessons, vocal jazz lessons, beginning piano lessons, tutoring elementary school kids... Actually, a better question would be what I'm NOT certified to tutor in right now. Sorry for the shameless plugs, but I just dropped a hefty amount of money on a microphone and other music-related things, and my bank account is definitely feeling it!

Anyway, the song of the day is called Star Scat by Caravan Palace. They're a gypsy electronic jazz group out of Paris, and their charts are SICK. Check it out!


Thanks for reading this very long post! Cheers, everyone!
Love,
Gilmore

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