Winning Branham’s Got Talent
Branham’s Got Talent is an annual event where student musicians can enter as a group or individual to display their musical talents. My group consisted of me, piano player, Sebastian Nguyen, flute player, and Andrew Goldberg, saxophone player. We performed Spain, by Chick Corea.
This experience was thoroughly enjoyable. I learned a lot about coordinating and working as a team. When Andrew first approached me with the want of playing Spain (he’s a phenomenal saxophone player), and asked me to play with him for fun, the first thought that came to mind was that this was going to be super fun. I listened to the song and was immediately captivated by it — the complexity, the solo’s, the jazziness. He also invited a flute player to join us: Sebastian. Us all being experienced musicians, I then suggested the idea that we should perform for Branham’s Got Talent, which was coming up in a month. We all excitingly agreed and started practicing.
Some challenges we experienced were witnessed through our efforts of collaboration; we had to determine where and when we were going to practice — usually we would practice during tutorial in our band room, but there were always others there before us using the piano, which limited our time during tutorial. Majority of the time, we practiced individually so that our rehearsals together would be effective and quick. Because the music we chose was very flowy and flexible, we had to understand each other strongly to the point where we could tell when someone was adding riffs or changing something on the spot, so that we could play together. To do this, not only did we have to keep our spot on the music piece, we also had to be flexible and listen, and possible change our parts to keep up with others. Additionally, Sebastian did not have a phone, so there wasn’t a quick way online to connect, which is why we always set up meeting times during class. Although that was difficult, it taught us to trust each other to remember to meet up. In the future, instead of relying on trust, we could designate a specific time of the week to meet up in order to improve communication.
Additionally, the printer at my home had run out of ink, so I’d been using the band room teacher’s ipad for the music sheets. The day of the performance, I realized that the IPad would seem unprofessional so during dress rehearsal I had to print it with the pages that we were playing. This resulted in another issue — I needed a page turner. During the show, I had to find others who could page flip for me and understand the music — I found someone, and just to be safe, we created a system where I nodded to show them to page turn.
Another challenge we faced was during our performance itself. Right before we were on (while the act before us finished playing), while we were waiting on the side of the stage to enter, we found that one of our players was suddenly missing — Sebastian. Many of the other players all pitched in and went outside to find him; turns out, he was waiting outside. According to others, he ran in as fast as he could and a minute later, we were on stage. While we were walking out, I could sense he was nervous, especially since the situation for him was so hectic. I whispered to him to “calm down” and “keep a positive mindset”. As I told him, I realized that these things could also be applied to me. So as we started playing, we both took breaths at the same time to show the beginning of our song, and then started playing.
When the band director announced our win, I was ecstatic! I (and probably the rest of our group), was not expecting a win. I, for one, had just printed out the music and found a page flipper. Sebastian was missing just before we went onstage, and Andrew decided to improv some parts in the music, which was determined a couple of acts before ours. We scurried onstage and was handed a card with an $100 cash prize (which we split). As the applause died down, people started congratulating us. It was awesome. Our hard work paid off.
