Youth Band Kickoff

Today is the event that starts the season of the Fountain City Youth Band Academy, which is the educational outreach initiative of the brass band.  We're expecting more than 100 kids from middle school through high school, usually with a smattering of adults and college students looking to dust off their playing chops.

It's always a good time, giving us guys the opportunity to teach younger people -- what many from the group do for a living anyway.  I would have loved the opportunity to play with such a group when I was younger.  I don't know if it would have increased my love for music: that was pretty strong already.  But I bet it would have been a better use of my times (and my lungs) than playing in the community band that forced everyone to spend hours working at a smoky bingo center as a fundraiser.  Seldom have I been in a place that was so soggy with despair and the hope of $50.

The youth band is gradually building towards a British tour in 2012, the exchange of a similar tour with the Bolton Youth Band who came to Kansas City a few years ago.  Now THERE'S an opportunity worth refilling drink cups of snappy old ladies who don't want you to pour from "the clockwise side" else it will interfere with their system.

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