Please Change Your Bookmarks:

In an effort to streamline, I will no longer link to this blogger page from my website. I have transferred over the old blog posts, so everything is there. Please go to: http://www.jsayreallen.com/blog/blog.html

Thanks!

Christmas Edition Blog Post!

I am supposed to be doing Musicology, but my brother, Nicholas sent me this video. I could not contain myself from sharing it with others!!

Christmas Edition Blog Post!

Sorry, iTunes...you just got rocked!

Well, mixed emotions today....I am usually the champion of all things Apple. Today I died a little inside. On the other hand, I am ecstatic! Most classical musicians know that almost anything put out on the Deutsche Grammaphone record label is a quality product. Today, DG launched their own digital download service. Right now, hundreds of albums are available online and within weeks, thousands. This is the first digital download service that allows you to download a single movement of a symphony (still, you now you should get to know the entire work, right?). The pricing for a single movement is either $1.29 or $1.99, which is a whole lot of music in the orchestral world! The files are non-DRM protected MP3's ripped at 320K, so the quality is superior to iTunes and you get a pdf with liner-notes even if you download a single track.

Dear Apple,

This is how it's done!

Signed,

me.

Thanksgiving 2007

More details later!

November Update

Well, apparently I can only manage monthly updates instead of regular blog postings. Shame on me! So much has happened in the past month. The Quad City Symphony Orchestra did a great set last week with three George Gershwin pieces: An American in Paris, I Got Rhythm Variations, and Rhapsody in Blue on the first half and Dvorak Symphony No. 9 From the New World on the second half. Great fun!
Last night we had our University of Iowa Trombone Studio Recital. It went very well. The trombone ensemble played four pieces. In addition to the bone choir, the Old Capital Brass Quintet played a Koetsier piece, LeAnn Dahn (a junior trombone performance major) played Blue Bells of Scotland, and Zack Morton (a senior bass trombone performance major) played an unaccompanied work.
Thanksgiving and the back end of the semester is upon us! In one week we will be in Colorado to be with Kate's family for the holiday. Great times!

October Update

Things are clicking along here in Iowa City! I am continuing with my physical therapy and I think it's on the up and up! I have played gigs with the Temptations and then Quad City Symphony and next week I will play with Quad City again. Things are going well there. Lessons with Dr. Gier have been fantastic. We have been getting through a ton of literature including the Juraj Filas Sonata, the Gordon Jacob Concerto, the Nino Rota Concerto, and Eugene Bozza's Hommage a Bach. That's a good amount of literature for two months! I am happy to have more time to practice this semester than I have for the past little while. I hope to be able to keep it up! Here are a couple of recent pics to keep people happy!




The pictures: two of Herky, the University of Iowa mascot. There are a bunch of these around town. These two are in the UofI hospital. I pass them on the way to physical therapy. The other picture is of the Quad City Symphony busses. They bus people (mostly older folks) from all over to the symphony! I thought that was so crazy.

All images taken with a 2 Mpx iPhone.

The Temptations!

Last night I played my first Motown (not speaking geographically, of course) gig! It was the "Temptations Review featuring Dennis Edwards". Dennis Edwards was one of the founding members of the Temptations and the only living original member. He has kept it going all these years. I'll tell you what, those guys were entertaining! They did all their famous tunes with their signature dance moves. It was a real kick to watch up close (we were behind and to the left of the them). Tons of fun!

Pain....

I finally went to a doctor for the pain I have been having in my left shoulder. It is sometimes constant, but the pain most often comes when I am holding the trombone and that's not a good thing. As it turns out, I have a shoulder impingement. This means that the arm does not sit in the joint properly. I now have a series of exercises to strengthen the right muscles and stretches to loosen others. Hopefully it will start feeling better soon!

September Update

So, four weeks have passed at the University of Iowa. So far, so good! Our first orchestra concert is next Wednesday, September 26 at Hancher Auditorium. Next Friday I have a first - the first time I have even played with the Temptations! So that's cool! Granted, there is only one living original member. Still, it should be pretty cool.

Last week it was nice and cool (not this week though!) so I practiced quite a bit at the river. Enjoy the pic!

A day in Iowa

Today was a strange day. We got up earlier than we have lately, so that was rough. I went and helped someone move in for about an hour today. They didn't have much stuff and several people came to help, so it was pretty easy. The best part? It was 65 degrees! The first cool day in months!

After coming home to change, I went up to the school to practice for a bit. I took this picture while I was up there. It's an Iowa Hawkeye statue made entirely of mirrors!

Tonight Kate and I couldn't think anything to do, so we just got in the car and started driving. We decided to flip a coin to decide where to drive - heads is a left turn and tails a right turn. First it took us to the state girls' softball game! Next was a crazy car/cart/motorcycle. Then to the mall where we bought two cd's for Kate's collection (her cd binder with around 100 cd's was stolen, so we have to start rebuilding). There was more uneventful driving around, but it turned a boring night into something unboring! I'll take it!





Note: all images taken with a 2 Mpx iPhone.

New site design

Let me know what you think about the new site design. I am playing with a lot of options, so the site might change often for the next little while.

The Beginning of the End!

One week from today I have TA orientation here at the University of Iowa. What does this mean to me? It means the beginning of the end! I have actually thought about it in this way for a while. Pursuing graduate degrees is a long, hard road (granted, I only understand that statement in the singular at this point). When all is said and done I will have been in some kind of school for twenty two years, ten of that being various universities (five years at the University of Northern Colorado, two years at the University of Utah, and three years at the University of Iowa). As I start down this path of the doctorate, I realize that many of my life goals have shifted from several years ago. They are no longer the idol worship of my youth: I want to BE Joseph Alessi or Christian Lindberg has shifted to: I want to be the best trombonist and musician that I can be. I am amazed at and honor many great trombonists and musicians including the two previously listed. This paradigm shift for me has opened up new worlds to me as a musician and performer. This can be illustrated in an example from my youth:

When I was younger I loved baseball (I still do, I am just no longer directly involved with it). I grew up in San Jose, California back when the San Francisco Giants were actually good. I was there when they went to the 1989 World Series, in fact I was watching when the earthquake hit! But I digress.... I loved to watch Will Clark. He has been nearly forgotten by now, but at the time, I thought he was the greatest. He was left handed and I right handed, but I did my best to mimic his batting stance, even down to his famous frown while batting! I never hit particularly well with this approach, but he was my hero! Later, I found a stance in the batters box that was comfortable for me and allowed me the best access to see the pitcher and have the best bat speed - for me.

When I was a freshman at the University of Northern Colorado I was really quite naive to the trombone world. I didn't know that there were professional trombone soloists or recordings (incidentally, my parents had purchased Christian Lindberg's "Romantic Trombone Concerto's" for my sixteenth birthday and I exchanged it for a punk-rock cd since I thought it was going to be something like Kenny G playing love songs. I now love that recording - which I had to pay nearly $20 for....). In one lesson I asked my teacher, Buddy Baker, who or what I should listen to. His response was to get the Joseph Alessi recording called Slide Area - another amazing cd. Buddy said that I should listen to his sound and try to sound like him. I completely misunderstood him. I took this to mean (again, as a naive 16 year old) that I should try to sound just like him. I started working on solo rep that he had recorded so that I could be just like him. I would listen closely to where Alessi breathed or what he would do with a phrase. Sometimes I would just listen so much that I would actually transcribe the pieces like you would with a jazz solo. This was good for my development because I grew in many was through this process, but it hindered me in the fact that I was not making my own decisions. In a lesson with Dr. Nat Wickham, he once told me that he doesn't listen to a recording of a piece until he has already prepared it. I didn't understand how someone could do that at that time, but I think I do now.

I have developed my own sound (which of course I am always trying to refine), and my own style of playing which has been influenced by my many experiences and teachers. I approach things with an attitude of "how would the composer want this performed" verses "how would Alessi play this?". I still feel you can't get a better recording of an orchestral work to study (for trombonists) than a New York Philharmonic recording - i.e. Mahler 3 - Holy Cow!, but a more musicological approach can be much more rewarding for me. That being said, I am still planning on taking some lessons with Alessi at some point.

There it is. The beginning of the end. A beginning of a new era! Or something like that. Another stop on the journey of life. Or whatever hippy mumbo jumbo you want to call it. It's exciting and invigorating! Wish me luck!

almost time for school to start again!

As I begin my twentieth year of formal education things seem a little different this time around. I am not nervous at all for a new school or a new place. I am just excited! This has never happened before! It is gong to be great fun playing in quality ensembles, taking challenging courses, and meeting new people. Even though I have entrance exams in a few weeks and an audition for the Cedar Rapids Symphony the same week, I am completely at peace. This is our home and where we are supposed to be.

Happy Independence Day!

Happy 4th of July Everyone!

Every one has their own traditions for each holiday whether it be Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, 4th of July, Oktoberfest, whatever. For the Allen family the Fourth of July means to generally watch a parade (which I was unable to watch due to work this morning), then have some BBQ, eat some birthday cake for Christopher, watch 1776, then watch some fireworks. I am happy to report that we did all of these! It was a great time today. Tons of fun and now it is past midnight and we are tired! Who would have known that little Coralville, Iowa would have such a big fireworks display!