If you had closed your eyes while listening, you may have thought you were in a movie theater.
That’s because the music coming out of the University High School band room on Wednesday afternoon was that cinematic.
Soaring trumpets, thunderstorm-timpani and the sonorous commentary of a lone bassoon, to bring it all together.
Then Mark Palmer broke the imaginary film, in the imaginary projector, when he spoke up.
“Oooh, 97%,” he said, with good-natured gruff. “We were this close.”
Palmer, the UHS band director, also conducts the Symphonic Winds ensemble, which performs before a special audience at 2 p.m. Friday in Charleston.
That’s the first day of the 2022 gathering of the West Virginia Music Educators Association.
“We feel good to be going back,” Palmer said. “Especially after what’s been happening over the past couple of years with COVID.”
The group is set to perform in a studio space at the Charleston Coliseum and Conference Center.
It had to play its way in, with a strict audition.
“They’re playing beyond their years,” their director said. “I’m proud of them.”
They breathed life into martial marches and contemporary symphonic pieces.
On Friday, the ensemble will be done out in gowns and tuxedos. Wednesday, they were wearing requisite T-shirts, sweaters and scuffed-up footwear.
One kept time with her feet encased in a pair of Chuck Taylor All-Stars. High-tops.
Josh Kerns, who plays trumpet in the ensemble, said his senior year has been full of highs and lows, due to the pandemic.
“We didn’t know what the year was gonna bring,” said the student, who plans on going to WVU and auditioning for the school’s iconic Pride of West Virginia Marching Band.
“I’m just happy we’re here and going to Charleston.”
Palmer conducted the proceedings Wednesday with a wink and a sense of humor.
“Whoa, whoa, where you going?” he asked, as one musician bolted from his chair to tend to a cracked reed in his saxophone. “You’d better play that a lot tonight. We don’t want this happening on Friday.”
“You know I never liked you,” he said to another, as he tried hard not to grin.
“Hey,” he deadpanned, after one song with a share of flubbed notes, “all I want is perfection.”
The students laughed and teased him back.
“They really are talented,” Palmer said.
“If I stood up here and white-knuckled it, no one would be having any fun. And we wouldn’t be going to Charleston.”
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