In the Fall 2012 Preview I mentioned that our faculty brass trio would be performing at the NACWPI National Conference in San Diego on November 17th. NACWPI – the National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors – holds annual conferences, publishes a quarterly journal, and sponsors a composition contest.  While not as high profile as the individual instrument societies, NACWPI still puts out quality publications and has quite a few members. Among their officers is Dr. Patrick Smith, Associate Professor of Horn at Virginia Commonwealth University (he serves as Vice President of NACWPI).  I must confess that I didn’t know much about the organization until joining recently, but I’ve enjoyed reading the last few journals, and plan to continue my membership. The last two issues have included a variety of articles, including new music and recording reviews,  and portions of a dissertation by James Criswell, An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Mixed-Media Compositions for Horn Alone and Horn with One Other Acoustic Instrument.

This year their conference is being held in conjunction with the Fifty-Fifth National Conference of the College Music Society, which is a kind of parent organization to NACWPI. There look to be some interesting performances and presentations throughout the conference, and I hope to attend at least a few of them. We’ll be performing on an 11:00am recital, along with other chamber ensembles. Our program, “Works for Brass Trio by Living American Composers,” includes A Philharmonic Fanfare, by Eric Ewazen, and movements from Duncan Trio by David Sampson and Triple Play by Jan Bach. Rehearsals are going well, and we are looking forward to our performance. If you are in attendance at either the CMS or NACWPI Conference, feel free to stop in and have a listen.

As usual, I plan to post some updates and reports from the conference.