Led Freakin' Zeppelin! Led Zeppelin On Tour - featuring Rock and Roll, Immigrant Song, Black Dog (!), Kashmir, Stairway to Heaven. So far, Rock and Roll was pretty fun. The Immigrant Song was cool but needs work. We started Black Dog but the director bailed for now. Kashmir and Stairway are both good concert band pieces; Stairway in particular was pretty moving.
So this piece has progressed quite a bit since I posted this. On the following rehearsal, the director dropped the Immigrant Song, because the low brass has to play the difficult and monotonous bass line for like 100 measures. This, only like 20 times:
So we crossed it off on our sheet music, but then we worked on Black Dog, which is actually pretty fun for a concert band. The Robert Plant wailing vocal line is played on alto sax, and we have a great young sax player who really belts out a jazzy riff. The guitar/bass melody is quite complex and difficult, but we handle it pretty well.
The following week, our director apparently had several people asking about the Immigrant Song (including me), so after the break, he announced we'd be putting it back in (screw the low brass). So now we're playing it. But that piece and Kashmir both drag on too long for a medley, so we're gonna do some editing.
