When about 3,600 student musicians from across the country sit down for a final concert after a long week of competition, an L.V. Rogers student will be among those doing the entertaining.
Grade 12 percussionist Alex Bullen is one of 60 young musicians to land a spot in the 2011 Canadian Wind Orchestra, an ensemble made up of some of the country’s strongest student instrumentalists.
Formed every year during MusicFest Canada, the honour ensemble spends a week practicing and workshopping with university staff and professional musicians before playing a final concert at Vancouver’s Centre for the Performing Arts on May 20.
“I’m really excited. I’m ecstatic,” says Bullen. “I’ve never been offered an experience quite like this, and I’m excited to do my best out there and take as much back as I can from the teachers and the faculty they have there.”
Bullen originally auditioned for MusicFest’s other honour band — jazz ensemble the Yamaha All-Stars.
“They didn’t have enough spaces for me, so they recommended I audition for the concert band,” he says.
“So I had to spend two days practicing my butt off to record a timpani solo, a snare solo and a mallet percussion solo and submit that to them.”
In addition to a rigorous practice schedule, orchestra members also take in a variety of concerts and are able to compete for scholarships and other prizes.
It’s the final concert that appears to have Bullen most excited, however.
“We’ll be basically the last band they hear at the competition, which I think is really cool,” he says.
“To play in front of a whole bunch of peers like that is a pretty cool thing.”
Bullen started playing concert percussion (a term which encompasses a range of instruments from snare drums to xylophones, bells and the marimba) in middle school, after experimenting with other concert band instruments.
“My dad is the music director [at LVR], so I had a lot of experience to try different instruments,” he explains.
“I didn’t pick the trumpet like he plays, but I tried the drums and I really thought it was a great fit for me.”
While the setlist for this year’s MusicFest performance hasn’t been released yet, Bullen says past orchestras have featured a diverse mix of music, including pieces with jazz and electronic elements.
It’s a good fit for Bullen, who plans to major in contemporary music at Toronto’s Humber College after graduation, to get experience “playing as many styles of music as I possibly can.”