Time-lapsed Blogography Day: Twenty Years Ago Today

Twenty years ago today, on March 18, 2000, I attended an underwhelming brass master class at George Mason University.

It was the final weekend of Tech's spring break and I was at home for an in-person intern interview at FGM (where I learned that they had already hired me and just wanted to chat) and a periodic "give up Ethernet for Lent" penance where I was forced to use my parents' 56KB dialup for a week.

On this Saturday, I drove to Mason for a master class put on by the two trumpeters from the Canadian Brass (Romm and Lindemann at the time, if my memory still serves). In my subsequent journal entry, I wrote that the class "was interesting, but not particularly helpful. More of a public interest type of class". I had hoped for some solid trumpet performance tips and ended up with random people asking "who came up with the idea to wear sneakers on stage?" It was essentially a Reddit Ask-Me-Anything before its time.

In fact, the only memorable aspects of the afternoon were bumping into a blind trumpeter I knew from high school (colloquially, not physically) and chatting with a cute senior flute player from Mason before the master class began.

The next day, I packed up my desktop computer and giant monitor, picked up Anna and Rick (a.k.a "Gold Medal") and made the 4 hour trip back to Tech.