Blast from the past

I gave a flute lesson here last night. After choosing my student's solo piece for an upcoming contest and playing through it once with her, slowly, I dropped a bomb. She is involved in her school's musical right now and she elected to be on stage rather than in the pit.

She plans on being an instrumental music major in college. I explained that when applying to schools, they do look at overall performance experience, but the bulk of it better be on her instrument. Makes sense, right? I told her that she needs to start being in the pit orchestra instead of on stage. I don't think she was very happy about that.

I pulled out a scrapbook I kept all the way through college and showed her that going back to 1986, I was in every musical...in the pit. Since I had the book out, I showed her all the articles and programs from various performances I did as a flautist.

After she left, I continued to relive my glory days and googled old friends and professors. One of the professors I googled was Lovell Ives, who was Director of Jazz Studies when I was at UWGB. I found something very interesting while reading the various hits for Professor Ives. Back in 1992, I was a part of the group that recorded "Go! You Packers! Go!" which is the Green Bay Packers fight song. Turns out that even as recently as this past football season, this recording gets played at every game (I assume only home games).

Lovell directed the Packer Band. I was principal flautist at UWGB and he needed a flute/piccolo player for the recording. I got paid $90 for a couple of hours of studio work and had a blast.

And there's still a piece of me out there, being played on a regular basis.

How cool is that?