On March 13th, it was my privilege to attend a symphonic concert at Tacoma Community College(TCC). TCC's symphonic band played their concert, titled: Joys and Sorrows, at 7:30 in the evening. This took place in the building 2 auditorium on the TCC campus.

The venue was pretty small, especially compared to Benaroya hall, but it accommodated everyone that wished to attend. It was a free concert so you really can't worry about it too much.

There were a wide variety of pieces played. There was just about everything that you could think of. There was classical piece from Bach's works, a current piece from a Japanese composer made it into the nights festivities. The very first thing that the symphony played was an interesting piece that had the whole symphony clapping at different time. The title to the concert, Joys and Sorrows, really came into play from the range of different pieces. Some were upbeat and others much more somber. It's hard to talk about the history of every piece since there were so many from many different composers. The first piece titled Fa Una Canzona by Orazio Vecchi who was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance; second was My Jesus, Oh What Anguish by J.S. Bach who was a German composer and musician in the Baroque period; the third piece, Eine Kleine Waltzermusik, was by a composer that is still among us, Adam Gorb born 1958; The piece that the soloist played was composed by Claude T. Smith in 1984 and the name of the piece is Fantasia for Alto Saxophone; next was Lament for Wind Orchestra by Change Su Koh, who happens to be the youngest composer among the pieces by being born in 1970; the final piece, Suite Francaise, had five movements to the piece and was composed by Darius Milhaud a French composer of the early 20th century.

This performance was such a contrast to what I was initially introduced to in Seattle at Benaroya hall. I would say that the biggest difference is the audience. At Benaroya hall they won't let attends into the venue while the symphony is playing. On top of that, people are generally more consciences of those around them. Waiting to cough in between movements and pieces, among other things. The audience at TCC was quite the opposite. Little kids moving around during the performance, people getting up and leaving and entering again during the same piece, noisy babies, and people taking photographs. There was barely a time where something in the audience was not distracting me from the performance.  If I were to try and experience something like this again at a college level, I would try to sit as close to the front as possible. Which solves most of the distractions, but prevents an advantaged view at trying to view all pieces of the symphony.

There was an excellent piece that featured a soloist, Erik Steighner. Erik played, what I felt, was the complete range of the saxophone. Each section of the piece sounded a little different, from the high pitch wails to the sad heartfelt tones. It was really quite excellent and looked rather difficult due to the complexity of his finger movements on stage. It was a pretty long piece where the symphony helped back up Erik as he played the heck out of his saxophone. There were times when just the symphony took the forefront as well as time where just Erik was playing.

One thing that I was not used to was that the conductor would take a very long time to talk about an upcoming piece. The Seattle Symphony never did this. It made sense that he did this. Just because it was more of an academic setting.