In the final semester of school I continued doing concert band as it is always a great opportunity to play the trumpet with other musicians. I first didn’t know if I should participate in the Spring Gala concert as it requires more time commitment and therefore leaves me less time for studying. However, I then decided to take part in the concert as it would be another great event since I always enjoyed performing with an orchestra.

Me playing during last year’s musical. Photo courtesy: GeckoNet

We played a number of new songs this semester. I really liked two of the three new ones, which were Superstition (Stevie Wonder) and Pirates of the Caribbean (Hans Zimmer). The former is a very interesting song since there are many layers building up and working together. It is much more complex than a base layer and a melody as nearly all instruments and parts have melodies in different parts of the song. I am playing first trumpet, which has the last layer added to the song and which is therefore very complex as well in parts. However, it is a lot of fun because of this complexity and number of layers. Pirates of the Caribbean is always a great song to play, although our particular arrangement was not as much fun as the one I played in my previous school’s orchestra. I think partly as our band is small and doesn’t have many different instruments (like clarinets that are really good in this song) we cannot play some more interesting arrangements.

Me playing during concert band. Photo credits: Aidan McCoy.

Due to COVID-19, school was closed in March and we therefore also did not continue concert band. This was unfortunate as I was looking forward to my last concert in a school orchestra, the Spring Gala Concert. Despite this, I continued practicing the trumpet at home. In fact, I practiced more often than during school since I had more time. I did not practice the concert band songs but rather old songs was given by my trumpet teacher in South Africa as I prefer those. I did not practice to challenge myself to improve on certain songs, although I was happy that I did improve over the time, but rather to enjoy the sound of music and making music during this rather unusual and partly frustrating time.