BEAR Day Brass!
20 of The Townsend's School of Music's finest brass players perfomed six different pieces for BEAR Day! The Brass Choir is directed by Dr. Douglas Hill and has performed at many different functions at Mercer. On BEAR Day they performed once in the morning for BEAR Day Brass and then again in the afternoon at the Honors Convocation.
The Brass Choir opened BEAR Day Brass with Fanfare and Toccata by Bill Holcombe. Next, the Horn Quintet played a jazz style piece written by Lowell Shaw entitled Frippery No. 5. After Frippery No. 5, the Brass Choir played Fly Me to the Moon by Bart Howard and arranged by Jack Gale. The Trombone Quintet blew the audience away with a piece called Scarborough Fair by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. The Brass Choir then closed out their portion of the concert with Scherzo by John Cheetham and A Centennial Fanfare by John Zdechlik. Afterwards, several Music Composition students conducted some of their pieces that were written for brass choir, strings, piano, and vocals. Dr. Hill said he was "More than happy with how the performace went. This group worked really hard to put these pieces together so quickly."
Lunch on the Quad!
Immediately after the Brass Choir performance, lunch was served on the quad with some jazz music being performed by some of the Townsend School of Music's faculty including Dr. Monty Cole and Dr. Marcus Reddick. For lunch, Mercer served chicken, corn on the cob, baked beans, corn bread, and even peach cobbler! Sweet tea and lemonade refreshed the audience as they listened to soft jazz tunes on the breeze. Dr. Marcus Reddick said "Today is a great day to be eating lunch outside and to be playing music." Celia Garcia said "The food was great and the music was awesome!"
