A Celebration with Dueling Bands

Yesterday, there was a huge press conference at the School of Music. A woman named Barbara Jacobs donated $40.6 million to the school! Apparently, that’s the single largest private donation ever made to the university. People were pretty excited about it, to put it lightly.

At the press conference, the president of the university, the dean of the School of Music, the interim chancellor, and several others gave very inspirational speeches, all of them thanking the wonderful woman who has given us so much. Meanwhile, the big band that I’m in and the one run by Pat Harbison waited behind the curtain. We were set up, ready to “duel,” with our drummers and piano players facing each other and all the horn players fanned out from the center. Nobody in the audience knew we were back there. Then, all of a sudden, the curtain flew up, and we starting playing “Sing, sing, sing” complete with choreography and horn pops. The crowd went wild! We were the grand finale of the conference officially renaming the School of Music the “Jacobs School of Music.”

And of course, after the ceremony we got free cookies, balloons, and T-shirts. We munched our sugar as we listened to a faculty Dixieland band play “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue,” and “Indiana.” It almost made up for the fact that I had to get up at 6:00 in the morning!