Featured guest Ridgeline Brass – including CHS music director Sandi Green (second from left) on French horn – wraps up last week’s Chamber Music Concert. Performing with Green, from left, are Doug Doerfert on trumpet, James Meyer on bass trombone, Ron Bertucci on trombone and Chris Peters on trumpet. Gini Davis/The Chronicle
CRESWELL – With the music competition season in full swing, Creswell High musicians who vied for state bids during the District 12 Solo/Ensemble Festival held Feb. 22 at LCC were showcased during the Chamber Music Concert held Feb. 27 in the CHS commons.
Three-time state qualifier Caleb Holt performed ”Premier Solo,” by Eugène Bourdeau on bassoon – an instrument he started the summer before eighth grade, after starting on clarinet.
”My parents are both band teachers, and they were always talking about how rare bassoon players were. So, they decided to start my sister on bassoon,” Holt said. ”When they went to buy her a reed, I asked if I could buy my own so that I could also try – and after that, I decided that I wanted to spend all of my free time playing that.”
It was the ”rich colors in the bassoon sound” and ”the puzzle aspects” of its ”more complicated fingerings” that attracted him, said Holt, whose five-plus hours of practice each week will nearly double while preparing to represent CHS at the OMEA State Solo Contest on May 2 at Pacific University.
Creswell’s other district solo competitors also performed at the Chamber Music Concert: Brandon Moehlmann played Mozart’s ”Dove Sono,” from ”The Marriage of Figaro” on trombone; Sophia Janezic played Antonín Dvořák’s ”Humoresque” on violin; Gonzalo Cardenas played Johann Ernst Galliard’s ”Sonata 1” on trombone; and Jackson Velarde performed Chick Corea’s ”Morning Sprite” on piano.
A woodwind quintet comprised of Holt on bassoon, Brielle Brick on flute, Abby Mercer on oboe, Amy Meyers on clarinet and Katelyn McKillop on French horn played their District Ensemble piece, Bach’s ”Sarabande in D Minor.”
”Our musicians performed beautifully and, for all but Caleb, it was their first time at an event of this nature,” Music Boosters president Mandy Hoggard said of Creswell’s District Solo/Ensemble entrants. ”Every performer was given some helpful critique and teaching from each of their adjudicators, and all of them are looking forward to this event again next year.”
”I like getting the feedback from the judges; they will often have different insights from the teachers that I work with regularly,” said Holt, a senior who hopes to continue playing bassoon in college and beyond.
Bracketing the Chamber Music Concert were two special guests: University of Oregon Horn Trio Kamuela Akeo, Nathan Banks and Justin Stanley opened with Anton Reicha’s ”Six Trios opus 82 – No. 2 and 3”; and Ridgeline Brass closed with ”Fanfare,” by Paul Dukas; ”Sonata from Die Bänkelsängerlieder” – a c.1684 piece by an unknown composer; and the Merle Travis classic, ”Sixteen Tons.”
CHS music director Sandi Green plays French horn with Ridgeline Brass, alongside Doug Doerfert and Chris Peters on trumpet, Ron Bertucci on trombone and James Meyer on bass trombone.
Even after 15-plus years directing student groups in the commons, Green admitted to a few butterflies as a performer: ”All these years conducting on this stage, and this is my first time performing on it,” she said.
