My roommate, Daisy Garcia is a freshman, and heavily involved in the Music Department here at Cal Poly. She is in the Jazz Band, CP Symphony, CP Marching Band, and Jazz Combo. In short terms, she is constantly busy and is always thinking about music. In our room, we even have a “Where is Daisy?” schedule, because she is always doing something music-related on top of her normal college schedule. This is what is so beautiful about college: I have never been close with someone who knows music the way she does. She is so infatuated with music and everything it has offered her. She tries to explain it to me and our other roommates, but we will probably never know it to the depth that she understands it, nor appreciate it the way she does. I think I can speak for everyone who knows Daisy, and say that her love for music consumes her life– in a good way, of course!
Garcia has Jazz Band rehearsal four times a week for one hour, Symphony twice a week for two hours, Marching Band rehearsal twice a week for two and a half hours, and Jazz Combo rehearsal twice a week for one hour. That’s about 15 hours a week on top of her normal 13-unit college schedule as a Wine and Viticulture Major, and she is working towards a music minor. If that wasn’t enough, she also chooses to go to Tuesday-night “Jazz Jams” downtown and sometimes even weekend jams. She is heavily involved with everything to do with music and loves every minute of it.
I once mistakenly asked Garcia what her favorite ensemble is and she responded, “I couldn’t imagine being involved in only one style of music. I started on the flute, which is more oriented towards classical music, I fell in love with classical solo pieces for flute which is a huge contrast to jazz. While I love the structure and intricate beauty that classical music holds, I am even more in love with how jazz leaves room for self-interpretation,” (Garcia).
Like me, and a lot of non-music people, I don’t know what “Symphony,” “Big Band,” “ensemble,” and lots of other music terms are, so I asked Daisy to go into depth about what these things mean and how they have affected her in the music world.
A Look Into the World of Symphony
Garcia said “I had never been in a symphony before, until I came to Cal Poly. My first rehearsal was such a surreal experience. As one out of the two flutes on a piece, I sat in the middle surrounded by different kinds of strings, and instruments I am not used to playing with. As soon as the strings started playing together, it was such an out-of-body experience–like my ears were happy. I never knew a group of instruments could sound so graceful together. The only thing I can compare it to is smelling lavender for the first time. Being a part of a small Wind Section in a huge group of strings is something I have never experienced before. I simply love adding wind accents to their beautiful string-playing. I love Symphony and I never want to quit. I am really excited to listen to and understand more classical music, so it can help me with playing and understanding the emotions of the composer.”
Marching Band is More than A Half-Time Performance
“I really love Marching Band because of the community it provides. Marching band isn’t just the football halftime show: there is a lot of preparation that goes into the show, where people are bonding and making lifetime connections. Some people don’t even know there is a Cal Poly Marching Band, which is crazy to me because we are very active in the sports games and rehearsals. We rehearse A LOT! Marching band carries a lot of joy in the music we play because, after all, we are trying to raise up the school spirit at sporting events. But that’s not all we do. Our skills transfer over to the parades that we participate in, which are the Christmas Parade in Downtown SLO, and the Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco. Drill (the shapes we make on the field during halftime) is very intricate and requires a lot of core strength and awareness, because you are reading music, playing your instrument, and marching to a specific spot on the field all to create the shape–and we have to do that while maintaining good marching form. On every beat, we have to be on the same foot,” says Garcia.
Jazz Combo vs. Big Band
“Jazz Combo is a group of seven students playing a jazz standard and the main point of it is for everyone to improvise. Jazz has a lot of expression, and is very beautiful. In every improv solo, you can hear a little bit of the player’s personality, both in the way they are articulate and in the phrases they are speaking. Jazz Band carries so much joy and community. Big Band is a bigger group of people, and we all have a part that is essential to the outcome of what you hear,” (Garcia).
Coming from a small town, where band wasn’t a prevalent thing at my high school, this was a culture shock for me. There are SO many people at Cal Poly who are involved in Band or any kind of music group on campus. I think it is so cool to know that there are so many different passions in people’s lives and Cal Poly allows people to live through these passions and, like me, get more familiar with other people’s passions.