thoughts from trombone-land

As a service to you, our faithful fans, we have decided to set up a group blog to give a little more insight into our personalities, projects, and ideas. It's a good exercise for us to keep track of our goals and aspirations. It will also give you guys a chance to give us feedback and comments easily.

So, I'm Lauren, I'm the trombonist...that should probably tell you a lot right there. Right now I'm writing this from the gorgeous festival campus that hosts the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival every summer. We're here for six weeks of intense rehearsals, coachings, and performances. It's been awesome so far- lots of greenery, our own big practice space, great accommodations, and then there's the food. It'd almost be better if the food sucked, because then we wouldn't have to eat so much of it. And OMG lemon bars. Someone must have discovered a list of things I'm defenseless against, because lemon bars at at the top of that list. 

Anyway, I think we're all pretty content here. We're starting to buckle down in our rehearsals and learn our music, and it's great to have Sean with us full-time from here on out. Some pieces on our stands right now include Tim's great arrangement of Verano Porteno (Buenos Aires Summer) from Piazzolla's suite of season-flavored works, a Bach Prelude and Fugue that Sean transcribed, some Corelli, some Ellington, a fair splattering of Bernstein, and lots and lots of original arrangements to come. Not much of an arranger myself, but I've got a few ideas, including 'Hell' of Squirrel Nut Zippers fame, as well as some great 70s classics. I guess you can see where my interests lay. 

Of course, no brass quintet summer would be complete without its share of fart jokes, completely and wildly inappropriate comments, and large quantities of malted beverage, but I'll leave all of that up to your imagination.