Founders Day

My fraternity, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, is 105 years old today. May your proud banner "float for aye" (it's a quote from one of our songs). Happy Founders Day to all my brothers out there!

In celebration, we had a huge concert at TCU yesterday. It's a joint venture between the province and the DFWAAA, and since I'm an officer in both, I had a big hand in putting it together. The first half was the annual Province Big Band, where we get people from all over the province (three schools participated this time) to form a big band that gets to rehearse a full 45 minutes before performing. I've gotten to conduct that the past few years and it's always fun. After that, the TCU chapter's chorus did a song, and then all the Brothers did several of our fraternity songs, led by Jervis, the past national president and author of the Centennial History.

The second half was a real treat, as we had a performance by the amazing pianist Jose' Feghali. He's the winner of the Seventh Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1985 and Artist-in-Residence at TCU. His program was a mix of Chopin (a nocturne and a scherzo) and some music from his native Brazil. One of the pieces, he explained, would sound a lot like ragtime; the composer (an obscure one whose name escapes me) and Scott Joplin grew up at the same time, but in different parts of the world and (according to all his research) completely unaware of each other or their music. The similarity was astounding...

After the concert, we had a barbecue, though it had to be moved to someone's house because of the rain (it was sunny and humid by then, but the grass was wet). Moral of the story: Barbecue and white dress shirts don't mix! (No, it was somebody else that got all messy.) But a great time was had by all.

Since I was already at TCU, I got to hang with my buddy Micah, which was really cool because I hadn't seen him since school started. He's one of the only people I know who is as busy as I am, which happens when you're a really great player at a smaller school (especially when you're on scholarship, which means they "own your butt"). We got to catch up at Starbucks for a good long while before I came back.

Oh, this was funny: I stayed up fairly late on AIM last night, so the first Sinfonian I got to wish a happy Founders Day to was my old chapter brother Dan. The weird thing about this is that Dan lives in Paris now. That's France, not Texas. I got an invite to visit; he says the jazz scene is great there. Not sure how soon I can afford that, but yeah, I'd go...despite the tensions between the two countries, everyone should probably see Paris at least once, especially if it's during the Tour.

So, once again, a happy Founders Day to any Brothers who may have stumbled upon this site!