Over the President’s Day weekend, I wanted to go to Tahoe. My family has a nice little place in Incline Village, and with four days off, I wanted to take the dogs up there for a bit of snow fun.

But the weather did not cooperate at all (although you can see from this picture that it is looking great right now).

With multiple storms passing through, I decided to stay in the Bay Area for the weekend. But what to do?

On Friday, I met up with a group of musicians at an Italian lunch instigated by Tony Clements. We met up at my new favorite Italian joint, Luigi’s. After lunch, Tony turned to me and suggested that I adapt one of my arrangements for the Silicon Valley Brass Band.
And suddenly I had a weekend project.

I took an old arrangement of Silverado, from the amazing movie score by Bruce Broughton. Writing for Brass Band is a bit tricky – there are different conventions and unlikely instruments involved. There were a number of useful online resources, notably How to Write for Brass Band by Nigel Horne. With Mr. Horne’s able assistance, I was able to create a nice arrangement for the group.

Then I got excited and did another one!

Aranjuez is based on melodies from the famous guitar concerto by Joaquin Rodrigo that I arranged for Homestead High School and the 2000 Renegades.

I presented them to Tony at rehearsal last night, and he let me know that he would program them on our May concert.

The funny thing is, when it was time to go to work on Tuesday morning, I really wanted to stay home and arrange!