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Music has been a large part of my life as long as I can remember...This was at Christmas when my grandfather was teaching me how to play chord progressions...He never read any music, but could play just about anything by ear...
I have also done some composing, from when I wrote my first piece when I was 7 years old and performed it in my piano recital that year, to taking music theory for music majors (even though I wasn't a music major), and even taking the Electronic and Computer Music course at UC Davis...
Here are some complete compositions, both traditional and what some might call "sound-sculpture"...
This is the saxophone quartet I was in at the University of California at Davis. Unfortunately, the saxophone isn't really considered a "serious" instrument in that music department, so we started a chamber group of our own volition. We even convinced the head of the Music Department to allow us to have our own concert at the end of the school year! We played quite a variety of styles, from arrangements of Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" and Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" to 20th century pieces like "Andante" by Eugene Bozza, and even a cool jazz arrangement of "Alexander's Ragtime Band"...
...but you can see I started playing the sax very early...hee, hee...
I really started playing saxophone by learning the alto sax when I was 10 years old...Here I am playing a solo at the school concert that year...It was the main theme from "Peter and the Wolf"...
I ended up playing baritone sax for most of highschool, as pictured here with me soloing with the Casa Roble High School Jazz Band...
...but the last half of my senior year, I played alto again. Our main ballad for jazz band was the alto solo feature of "Georgia On My Mind"...Here I am playing "Georgia" at the Sierra College Jazz Festival...
I was a counselor at Sierra Music Camp near Soda Springs, Calfornia (in the Sierra Nevada mountains) for many years...This is me in the camp jazz band...
I do miss playing big band jazz, especially classics like "In the Mood"...
Stacia (Stacy back then) Carr and I wrote a song for the Sacramento County Board of Education contest in 1987, and we won...Of course, we also learned how the real world works, since by entering the contest we gave up all rights to the song, and they changed it so much, it was hardly recognizable! Well, I used my $125 of the winnings for a little Casio keyboard...On the first day we had just heard that there was a contest, Stacy told my mom, "We're going to win a songwriting contest"...and we did!...
Note the boring and obvious cliches in the "professionally"-arranged version, and note their reworking of our "work for your own education to improve yourself" theme into "give our schools money"...but my chord progression is still recognizable if you pay attention...
Back when I was nine and she was eight, Stacy and I first collaborated on musical puppet shows...a trilogy called "The Dinosaurs". Here's one of the songs from the at-the-time upcoming second installment in the trilogy, recorded for posterity and performed by me on my baritone ukelele...
I sing a whole lot, too...The first picture is me singing the theme from "Beauty and the Beast" at the ship talent show on the cruise I took in October, 1995, and on the right is me performing at the USAA Talent Show...
Tracia, Jeff Ouye and I were able to go to New York as extras in the Sacramento Symphony Chorus and sing Verdi's Requiem in Carnegie Hall on May 13, 1995...
See Jeff and me in the circles? You didn't believe me, did you? He's the one in the moustache, if you couldn't quite tell... Tracia told me that is her in the other circle, halfway behind some other woman's head, so you'll have to believe her (I do, of course!)...
Tracia, Jeff, Stephanie and I originally met on the UC Davis choir trip to Estonia and the USSR to sing Haydn's "Creation" with the Estonian Chamber Orchestra and Singers...The night before we flew out, we were part of the assorted choirs spring concert for UC Davis, where we sang an excerpt from the "Creation". I was a wee freshman at the end of my first year in choir, but the conductor singled me out for the soprano soloist of the trio section for our rehearsals and our concert...I was VERY flattered...
"Die Himmel Erzahlen Die Ehre Gottes" (184K)
The conductors changed, and I had a heck of a time ever getting solos again with the ever-British Paul "Right" Hillier at the helm, but I did get one good solo...but I still to this day think it was because he thought I looked Finnish enough...This is an excerpt from a setting of the Finnish epic poem "Rakastava", which is a love story that ends in a love duet...
Britta Peterson, soprano
Anthony Pollock, baritone
and the UC Davis Chorus
When Paul went on sabbatical, Christopher Reynolds took over the choir, and went whole-hog into American composers...and I finally got another solo! I do have to say this is my favorite solo I ever got to do, even if the solo was split between three sopranos...I would have loved to do the whole piece by myself...
Britta Peterson, soprano
and the UC Davis Chorus
Our little "quartet" has changed over the years due to distances, etc, but Tracia, Louie and I have remained fairly constant...The varying members have been Jeff Ouye, Stephanie Manansala (nee Davis) and Doug Barbieri (since none of us knew Doug before he met Tracia, you know).
These clips are only including me, Tracia, Doug and Louie, since they are from Stephanie's wedding and reception...This picture is of us singing our "choral toast"...
Speaking of partsongs, that's what we're usually caught singing, since we know them so well, and they don't need a whole choir to sound good...As a favor to Tracia, who was ending her term as choral conductor at the Woodland Christian Church that Sunday, we not only sang with her choir, but we also sang during the service. Tracia, Doug, Louie and I sang "We Place Upon Your Table, Lord" during communion...and Stephanie joined us outside afterwards just to sing some fun stuff, like our trusty partsongs...
Stephanie was away visiting relatives, but the rest of us went Christmas caroling in December, 1996...Here we are at Doug's mother's house...
By some Christmas miracle, all six of us were able to get together for caroling in December, 1997...and we even got organized enough to get two gigs! (vs. our standard wandering to houses of people we know) Here we are at our appearance at Arden Fair Mall in Sacramento, California, 1997...
