One of Thomas's Christmas Concert Songs

A LONG time ago, December 11, Thomas had both the Christmas concert for Philharmonia and Wind Ensemble on the same day. The Philharmonia dress rehearsal started at 3 and we had to leave about 2 to get to some hideous modern high school in the middle of some cow town about 20 miles south of Flint. It was about 10 degrees out with gale forces. The concert started at 4:00 and lasted about an hour. We then sat around twiddling our thumbs for about an hour. [Insert a trip to a bathroom for a costume change as Philharmonia wears "black on bottom, white on top" whereas wind ensemble requires tuxedo (!) with bow tie and cummerbund (sp?)--you can, I am sure, easily imagine Thomas and I arguing back and forth with me standing outside the men's bathroom door and him inside with me trying to explain how to work a bow tie that I can't see, and him trying to work a bow tie that is getting knotted up in his hair that he can't see--all very ridiculous.] Then wind ensemble had a dress rehearsal at 6 and then had their performance at 7:30. The concert didn't end until about 8:30 and we didn't get home until well after 9:00 It was a long and exhausting day. This is the first piece of the wind ensemble, which does not include Thomas's solo. That song, which ended the concert is almost 5 minutes long and we are having a hell of a time uploading that onto blogspot. But we will persist. Anyway, here is the start of the show and you get a small sight of Thomas playing (you can see his fingers dancing about on his bassoon), though this song is really to show off the brass not the winds.

Although it may be obvious by looking at the others in the ensemble, I'll say it explicitly, Thomas is by far the youngest in wind ensemble. He is only 12 and everyone else is 15 or older, with most of the kids 17 and some even in college. The conducter, Jamal Duncan, has a day job as a wind ensemble instructor at MSU.