Four musicians from Odessa College recently attended the Texas Music Educators Association convention in San Antonio.
Normally thought of as a gathering of all-star high school musicians, there is a Texas two-year all-state college band and choir that OC musicians participated in. They included vocalists Alyssa Vought and Rachel Holder and bass clarinetist Ulysses Rodriguez, and French horn player Alisa Torres.
Torres also sings and Vought plays the harp.
Holder said there were quite a few colleges represented.
“It was really fun. I got to feel like I was in high school again, because we went back in high school and I got to do it again, so I got to relive my youth a little bit,” Vought said.
Holder said she was surprised at how big it was since it was the first time she’d attended. On the other hand, Vought said it was smaller than she remembered.
“We met quite a few of our fellow vocalists, so whoever was in our section with us, we got to chat with during rehearsals,” Holder said.
Rodriguez said he was an all-state selection in high school, but didn’t go.
“But being able to have the opportunity to do it again was actually a lot of fun. You get to meet a lot of new people, experience a lot of different things. … I appreciated it more because I was able to grow a lot with everybody, with Mr. (Eric) Baker, with you guys and with the other instrumentalists. I was able to grow and come out of my shyness shell and be more open to everybody else,” Rodriguez said.
He added that he was surprised at how large the convention was.
“I was expecting it to be big, but I wasn’t expecting it to be quite as big. Everywhere you went you saw kids with their IDs walking everywhere. Walking from HEB to the convention center; walking from the hotel to the convention center. There was a lot of people,” Rodriguez said.
He added that he is going to pursue music as a career and hopefully be a classical musician.
“It was cool meeting everybody else because you get to see different mindsets on music, what people really want to do with it and how they think about things,” Rodriguez said.
Holder said she enjoyed experiencing a higher level choir where everyone came prepared and had such “amazing voices” was beneficial.
“I think it forces … us, to step up a level and work a little bit harder at the music. Of course the music we make is much better than way, when everyone plays together,” Holder said.
Vought agreed and said it helped her with her composition.
“I’m working on a composition piece right now …,” Vought said.
Torres said she was thrilled to go to the convention as it allowed her to learn new things and work with other people and try to match their sound.
Eric Baker, chair of Visual and Performing Arts at OC, said the college takes students to San Antonio as part of the band and choral directors association.
Through this experience everyone gets to get outside of their own perspective and work and network with other musicians.
Baker teaches band and Juan Hernandez is the choral director. Baker said they had not had vocalists attend the convention for a long time.
“This is a fantastic group. These are some of our very best students across the years that I’ve taught here. All of the students have been wonderful, but these particular students are very driven. They’re very passionate about making music. They’re very professional and they’re a lot of fun. I thought we had a great time driving down and chatting on the bus and eating barbecue and having all kinds of fun down there,” Baker said.
Hernandez said it was the first time he had brought singers to the TMEA convention.
“Of course it’s very exciting to have students from our department, which we know is a small department, but they were able to be a part of a bigger thing. The experience is not for me, but for them. We will have many more times of doing this, but what matters is the experience for the students. I think that it’s important for them to also experience different conductors … and it’s good for them to get out and experience different ensembles with other singers as well. It was an overwhelming experience for me, for sure, because there’s so much happening. You want to do everything and there’s not enough time to do every single thing. But it was very rewarding in the sense of getting these young musicians (to) participate with other musicians from around Texas. What I like about these experiences, especially about choral singing, is this idea of using your own body as an instrument to make music with other people. I feel that you’re very connected as one whole group. … I can tell by seeing them performing the day of the concert that they were very happy to be there. …,” Hernandez said.
The conductor the vocalists had was Craig Jessop, who led the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Hernandez said it’s important to work with conductors you don’t know so you can learn ways to make music differently and see different rehearsal techniques.
He added that he enjoyed watching them rehearse and seeing different approaches.
“You keep collecting tools on how to fix things as you watch other people rehearse and conduct other ensembles,” Hernandez said.
