The Secret Life of a Percussionist: Naturalization Ceremony

This past Thursday, the Trinity Wind Ensemble participated in one of the four semi-annual naturalization ceremonies that our university hosts. This was truly an incredible experience to witness. There were new citizens from eighty nine different countries and over eight hundred new citizens being naturalized. The Wind Ensemble performed eight different pieces at this ceremony which included the
"Star-Spangled Banner" and "God Bless America."

Attending this ceremony was a truly moving and exciting experience, because all of the people there were either becoming official citizens of the United States, or they were supporting their loved ones who were becoming citizens. This fact made the moment everyone was officially a citizen a very emotionally moving moment for the entire room. There were even speakers who were new citizens who volunteered to write speeches for the event about how happy and proud they were to finally be Americans. It was an excellent experience and I would highly recommend going to one of these ceremonies just to feel the energy and new pride in the room.

Now, you may be wondering, this is cool and all, but what does it have to do with being uniquely percussion-related? Well, something you would not have known from just attending the ceremony is that the percussion section at the back actually got in trouble with the stage manager. We were using a hole in the curtain that was clamped shut because it was much more convenient than going to the middle of the curtain to get in front of and behind it each time. But, it turns out "The clamp is there for a reason" and we were not supposed to be doing that at all. Leave it to a group of percussionists to get in trouble on the one of the proudest and happiest days of some people's lives.

All in all, the ceremony was a huge success and the entire performance went very smoothly. I would love to perform at another ceremony in the future to see if I still have the same emotional and proud experience that I did that day, and if I do, I will continue to attend more ceremonies, performing or not.