Sometimes the best laid plans can be upended by a single piece of metal. This was the case for me and my crew of five Hartwick College Wind Ensemble members as we tried to get to the first day of the CBDNA National Conference in Athens, Georgia. We arrived at the Albany, NY airport in plenty of time for our 6am flight, only to have it delayed until 2pm because of a broken part that could not be quickly replaced. When we finally arrived in Athens around 7:30pm, we had missed the entire first day of conference activities, including the first rehearsal of the Intercollegiate Band. Still, we were safe, with nothing more than a little boredom and tiredness to show for our delay.

So my narrative of the conference really begins bright and early on Day 2. The morning consisted of presentation sessions. With three available in every time slot, is difficult to pick just one. I was struck and impressed, though, by the level of ground reality and practicality reflected in the ones that I chose to attend. I started in Eric Smedley’s “Fostering Creativity in the Wind Ensemble: Incorporating Improvisation into What We Do.” His ideas really resonated (maybe thanks in part to his current Radiohead project), and I look forward to incorporating them into my work. I then headed over to Adam Fontana’s “The Way Broadly: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for Conductors,” which may the only time I have ever seen two conductors roll around on the floor together at a conference. Andrew Hunter teamed up with Matthew Maslanka to demonstrate the new visual realization of his father’s A Child’s Garden of Dreams, which I found quite moving! It’s available soon with other visual media for other pieces at Ion Concert Media. Brian Coffill, Joseph Scott, and David Wacyk teamed up for an excellent panel on “Flexible Thinking: Maximizing Musicianship Through Flexibility” (full disclosure: I’ve worked on these ideas as well, and I was name-checked three times). I capped the morning with an excellent programming session from Mark Bonner and Corey Seapy.

After a delicious taco-truck lunch, the first concert I had the pleasure of hearing was the Florida A&M Wind Symphony, led by Shelby Chipman. They put together an outstanding and diverse program:

Fanfare for Full Fathom Five – John Mackey

Invictus March – Karl King

Only Light – Aaron Perrine

Concerto for Euphonium and Wind Ensemble – Kevin Day (Demondrae Thurman, euphonium)

Unidad en Ritmo – Michele Fernandez

Sound and Smoke – Viet Cuong

Come Sunday – Omar Thomas

This concert dripped with joy. The Mackey was a forceful and brash opener for brass, followed by the many show-offy licks of the King. The Perrine was a great subdued palate cleanser for the Concerto, in which Demondrae Thurmon dazzled on Kevin Day’s sparkling material. The Fernandez is brand new, and a wonderful (and authentic) Afro-Cuban addition to the repertoire. Sound and Smoke gave us a chance for some cerebral joy that turned visceral by the end. Come Sunday expressed the kind pure ecstasy that doesn’t even fit in language and can’t sit still in your body. They had dancers! Every part of me begged for it not to stop, then to experience it again when it was over. It earned these players the longest ovation I’ve seen at maybe any concert ever.

We had but a few minutes to collect ourselves before the Vanderbilt University Wind Symphony took the stage under the baton of Thomas Verrier. They moved and breathed together with extraordinary fluency and cohesion. They played a wonderfully varied program of largely Latin-inflected music:

Fanfare and Flight – Noah Hudson-Camack

Spanish Dances (Book I) – Luis Serrano Alarcón

Tomorrow Will Be Our Last Sunny Day – Ryan Middagh (José Sibaja, trumpet and Jeremy Wilson, trombone)

Keepers of the House – Conni Ellisor

¡Pajarillo Cuñao! – Carlos Guzmán Muñoz

Entre Amigos – Rubén Darío Gómez

San Pelayo – Victoriano Valencia Rincón

My takeaways from this program: Noah Hudson-Camack is a very young composer (b. 2001) with a very bright future. I need to play more Alarcón. I need to pick Thomas Verrier’s brain about Latin band music. The Muñoz (the first of a Tríptico Colombiano) was the first piece I have ever seen to feature a maraca soloist at the front of the stage. He was absolutely the star of the show, though there were several other very fine soloists throughout the concert.

After a refreshing dinner break with some fellow Arizona State conducting grads, we caught the headline concert of the evening, featuring our hosts, the University of Georgia Wind Ensemble, and their new director, Nicholas Williams, along with fellow band faculty Jaclyn Hartenberger and Shiree Williams. I was literally front row center for this amazing show!

Splinter – Holly Harrison

Peace Dancer – Jodie Blackshaw

Ascendant Cycles – Peter Van Zandt Lane and Linqua Franqa (also the featured hip hop artist)

O Ye That Love the Lord – Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, trans. Shiree Williams

Symphony no. 4 “Strange Time” – Quinn Mason

Triptych for Trumpet and Trombone – Joseph Turrin (Chris Martin, trumpet, and Joseph Alessi, trombone)

A deep reverberation fills with stars – John Mackey

The Harrison was an energetic opener that contrasted nicely with the Blackshaw. Ascendant Cycles integrated original rap with wind band textures very nicely over three movements, and Linqua Franqa was a joy to watch. The Shiree Williams’s colorful Coleridge-Taylor transcription set the stage nicely for Mason’s dreamy Symphony, which showed the clear imprint of Mason’s most prominent teacher, David Maslanka. The Turrin was written in memory of Eric Rombach-Kendall, using themes from Turrin’s Fandango, also written for Rombach-Kendall years ago. The front row was THE place to be with Martin and Alessi as soloists, and it was a moving and exciting tribute. The Mackey began as a percussion piece, with handbells especially prominent, rising slowly to a celebratory ending that fittingly capped this nearly two-hour tour-de-force. Bravo to all! Can’t wait for tomorrow!