The Ithaca Trumpet Crew: Road to Manchester

by Adrienne Clermont

Introduction by Kim Dunnick

At the International Trumpet Guild annual conferences, the "Trumpet Prelude" groups which perform in a 10 minute slot as a prelude to a feature event are nearly always university or conservatory groups, with the occasional professional or alumni ensemble appearance. In 2000, this tradition was broken when an ensemble of high school and middle school trumpeters from Ithaca, NY performed as a prelude group at the ITG conference in Purchase, NY. These young players were well received by the audience, and decided to send an audition tape for the next year's conference in Evansville. At Evansville, they caught the ear of Murray Greig, conference host for the 2002 ITG conference in Manchester, England.

Murray invited the group (now called the Ithaca Trumpet Crew) to send an audition tape for his conference. Several things made this conference attractive to the young players: the obvious lure of being in England, the chance to perform in a foreign country and the opportunity to hear top players from the UK and elsewhere. Another important attraction for the Manchester conference was the date. Previous performances by this group had been in the month of May, and the New York public schools don't finish until late June. Since the conferences generally go from Wednesday through Saturday, this meant the kids had to arrange to miss one or two days of school, as well as at least one day of the conference. The Manchester conference, however, was to be July 2 through 6, and the students would not need to miss any school to attend the entire conference.

The Ithaca Trumpet Crew sent Murray a tape in the fall, and, once accepted, started the process of choosing and rehearsing the specific pieces they would play, arranging the travel and housing, deciding on dress for the concert, etc.

As to the music, much of the trumpet ensemble literature is quite difficult or has a range that is hard for high school players to sustain. For each of their previous performances at ITG conferences, the group had invited a local composer to write something to be played at the conference. This year they asked Ithaca College composer Dana Wilson (who was commissioned by the ITG to write a concerto to be premiered at the 2002 conference) to arrange something patriotic for them. Dana graciously agreed, and produced a lovely arrangement of America. One of the players in the group, Danielle Koplinka-Loehr, had been writing a trumpet ensemble piece, and after some revision, presented it to the Crew as a possible performance piece. The Crew liked the piece, and with a few more revisions, it was ready to go. The last piece they played was chosen by the director, Jane Dunnick, from the children's choir literature. The piece, Las Amarillas, is a traditional Mexican song with interesting rhythms.

If the web site review and the many comments from audience members are an accurate indication, the performance of the Ithaca Trumpet Crew was a huge success. Playing all three pieces from memory and the first piece without a conductor, they were given tremendous applause from the large audience.

Several weeks after the conference, one of the trumpeters, Adrienne Clermont, gathered the Crew in Ithaca to talk about the trip. Her article is based on the interviews with the Ithaca Trumpet Crew members, who are:

Adrienne Clermont, age 16
Andrew Dawson, age 17
Rebecca Graham, age 14
Abigail Hinchcliff, age 16
Danielle Koplinka-Loehr, age 15
Peter Speh, age 16
Michael Tilton, age 16

Introducing the Ithaca Trumpet Crew

Last September, the seven of us started rehearsing as the Ithaca Trumpet Crew – ten whole months before our anxiously-awaited performance in Manchester on July 3rd and 4th. "At the beginning, we weren't sure what pieces we were going to play," Peter explained. "By December and January, we narrowed down our choices to the pieces that we actually played." The first few months we practiced as a group once every week or two, focusing mainly on learning the pieces on our own and in our private lessons with our teacher, Jane Dunnick. By the spring, though, we'd worked all the way up to two hour-and-a-half rehearsals per week.

Needless to say, by the end of this, we'd spent way too much time together, and knew each and every one of each other's pet peeves and strange habits. But as much as we got on each other's nerves, we'd grown incredibly close as a musical ensemble and as friends – and I believe this had a huge positive effect on our performance as a group.

Danielle said that the hardest part of our preparation was "finding a time to meet, because everybody's schedule conflicted." True enough: everyone in the group, in addition to all being hard-working students, had many other interests that created a continuous scheduling nightmare for the Crew. Abby runs cross-country and track, Danielle runs cross-country and sings in the local children's chorale, Peter plays the piano and is a member of math team, Andrew is a Boy Scout and does stage crew at the high school, Mike works at an ice cream store and does stage crew, Rebecca was busy preparing trumpet solos for a national competition and an ITG master class, and I'm co-captain of the high school girls' rugby team and work at another ice cream store. . . . Obviously, we all have more than enough activities to keep ourselves occupied. Luckily, though, we managed to all find space in our busy schedules to fit in plenty of time for the ITC.

Peter added that for him, the hardest part was "learning not just to play every note accurately, but also to put a lot of musicality into it. I managed to play pretty much every note accurately many months before the performance, but after that I still had to work on intonation and articulation." Because we had such a long time to prepare the music, we were able to go above and beyond our level of playing in previous years and concentrate on the musicality of our performance.

While we were discussing what was difficult about learning the music, Abby was kind enough to voice what we'd probably all been thinking. Learning the music "on our own" was a little bit difficult for the more procrastination-prone in the group (myself included) who had trouble getting started almost a whole year before we were going to the ITG conference. But everyone managed to get up to speed once we started working together as a group a little bit later on in the process.

We soon learned that everyone has a distinct "role" that they play in the group, and our unique personalities are some of the things that make our group so interesting. Abby termed us "eclectic." Or, in Andrew's words, "Most of us are okay, we just act like psychopaths."

In the group, I'm "The Responsible One" – as you can tell by the fact that I am the one writing this article – who spent time each week making phone calls and sending e-mails to figure out when everyone had an open spot in their schedules to fit in an ITC rehearsal. Abby got the nickname “the trumpet strumpet” because she dressed up in unusual outfits to add humor to our rehearsals and performances. Peter, the klutzy math genius of the group, became infamous for his ability to arch one eyebrow, and then the other, in time to the music – while playing the trumpet! Michael is known for his sarcastic wit, which got him in trouble with the rest of the group at times during the year. Andrew is the "brawny boy-scout" who we all like to use as our human punching-bag. We tease Rebecca for being the most mature member of the group, despite the fact that she is two to three years younger than the rest of us. Danielle is known as the creative, musical one in the group – that's why she composed one of the three pieces we performed this year.

As you may be able to tell, we make for a pretty interesting trumpet ensemble, and we all have very diverse interests. But despite our differences, trumpet gives us a common ground. Michael said, "For a mixed group, we're really close."

Back Row (from left): Michael Tilton, Peter Speh, Jane Dunnick, Andrew Dawson Front Row (from left): Danielle Koplinka-Loehr, Adrienne Clermont, Rebecca Graham, Abby Hinchcliff

A "collaborative effort" is how Peter described the way we selected what pieces we would play. The first piece in our program, America, was arranged for us by local composer Dana Wilson. This was the first piece we memorized, which allowed us a lot of time to work on dynamics and interpretation of the music.

In the first few months of rehearsal, Danielle came to us with a piece she had been working on for five trumpet parts. We played through all of Fantissimo's stages of composition and revision. Originally we were a little doubtful as to how the piece would turn out, but in the end, everyone – in the group and in our audience – was impressed by Danielle's talent and creativity.

For our last piece, Mrs. Dunnick chose around five pieces from the Ithaca College chorale music library. From these, we almost unanimously decided on Las Amarillas, a fast, fiery, rhythmically challenging Mexican folk song. It was originally arranged for three voice parts (which was, coincidentally, performed by Danielle's chorale at the same time we were preparing it for the ITC) but we just read it as if it were three trumpet parts.

The next part of our preparation was the memorization of the music. Mrs. Dunnick had planned to have us try to memorize America as one of her goals for us this year. But after we had gotten used to the idea of memorizing music and learned what techniques worked best for us, we took the initiative and decided that it would be even cooler to get rid of music stands altogether and memorize all three pieces.

"Overall it helped us get out of burying our heads in the stands and make it more musical," said Danielle. "That was a way we could get to understand the music instead of just playing the notes." By the end of the school year, "you could almost turn off your brain, your fingers knew it so well," joked Andrew.

All of our preparation for ITG and our numerous performances around Ithaca definitely payed off, not only for our actual performance, but in all parts of our life. Andrew commented that "being comfortable performing in front of a group is kind of critical. . . . A lot of classes require you to speak in front of people, so being comfortable in public situations is always a plus." Abby, who had the strongest performance anxiety of any of us, learned to "let it not show that you're nervous. That whole smiling thing," she said, referring to our constant reminders that smiling on stage would help her relax. She also learned about "stage presence, and the value of preparation towards a final goal." Danielle pointed out that each person played a solo within one of the pieces, which helped everyone to become even more confident about their playing.

We soon found out that we would be performing as the Prelude for Häkan Hardenberger's “celebrity master class,” one of most prestigious and well-attended events of the conference. When I asked whether this news made her more nervous or more excited, Danielle said, "It made Mrs. Dunnick more nervous!" Mrs. Dunnick knew that this meant even more pressure for the Crew, but was excited that the ITG conference organizers thought highly enough of us to give us this performance, and encouraged us to keep working hard. Danielle added, "I think it made me a little more nervous, but since it turned out okay, it made the experience even better."

Abby explained, "It made me more nervous in the beginning, but as we got the music prepared, and we had more performances around town, and I got more used to performing, it made me more excited that more people would be able to hear us play, because I knew we were going to be able to do well."

Attending the 2002 Conference

Finally, June rolled around. It was crunch time – as we all frantically finished up our last school assignments and took final exams, the Crew was rehearsing twice a week and we were all making plans to leave for Manchester at the end of the month.

When we finally arrived at the Royal Northern College of Music for the conference, we had two or three brush-up rehearsals after a few weeks of being apart, and also had the chance to attend many of the classes and concerts at the conference.

We found this ITG conference to be somewhat different from the ones we had previously attended in the States, at Purchase, New York and Evansville, Indiana. Everyone agreed that this one seemed a bit more formal, mainly due to the lack of large number of college students that had dominated the conferences in the US. "I thought it would be different, because we're in a different country and their music styles are way different from ours," explained Rebecca. "I've heard a lot about how they prepare themselves more. . . . So this conference was, from the one in Indiana, a little more – I thought – professional. Because you're getting more of a sense of how people from different countries play, it was good."

Abby said, "I remember the first year, when John Faddis was doing the whole conference, it was a lot more jazzy than any of the other conferences, and that's what I remember about the first one. The second year, it was a bit of everything, but it was down in Indiana, so it still had the American background. This one in England, there was a lot more from around the world – you'd go to master classes and people would be speaking in broken English! European players and American players have very different styles, I’ve found. American people are more relaxed about stuff. But the European people prepare themselves, they think about all the aspects of the music, and then they don't really joke around as much on stage."

Also, we found that the shift from a college campus to just one building in an urban setting changed some aspects of the conference. There weren't as many venues, which forced some of the master classes and lectures to crowd into small classrooms, and there weren't any huge performance halls as there had been in previous years. Andrew noted that because of the reduced space there weren't nearly as many vendors as there had been before.

Many of the performers and ensembles that we saw at this year's ITG conference will remain in our minds for a long time. One of our favorites, of course, was Häkan Hardenberger. "I thought he had a lot of charisma," observed Danielle. "His physical being filled up the space." We were all struck by the clarity and brilliance of his tone, and his amazing ability to fill the entire performance hall with his sound.

Another huge hit with everyone was the Boston Brass, who we saw play in the July 4th evening performance, which we were also lucky enough to take part in. "Their tuba guy was awesome!" exclaimed Abby. Their enthusiasm for performing and outgoing stage presence made them so much fun to watch.

As we were discussing groups that we enjoyed hearing, we noticed that Michael is wearing a t-shirt from the Black Dyke Band, a British brass band that played at the conference on Friday night. Mike explained, "They were really good – I bought three of their CDs!" Danielle also liked their performance: "It was cool because it was one of the only times at the conference where they had a female trumpet player who was front and center. . . . They would be sitting down and screaming all these really high notes. They had people in the balconies with these huge amazing solos that would come down to the audience. . . . Also, some of the solos were played by the university students, so it was cool to hear them because they weren't all that experienced, but they could still play all this amazing stuff."

We also enjoyed attending the Tuesday morning master class of Guy Touvron, where Danielle performed a solo, and John Dickinson's master class the next afternoon, in which Rebecca performed a solo. “It was neat because it made me focus on my own personal nervousness, and I made myself not get as nervous, and that was really good for me,” said Danielle. “I played, and I actually had a fun time playing, and so that kind of carried over to the lesson – I was able to accept a lot of his teaching towards me, because I was more relaxed. . . . His teaching was neat, and it was different from Mrs. Dunnick's or Dr. Dunnick's, obviously, so it was cool to get a different perspective, and I think the people in the audience liked it too. . . .”

Rebecca agreed, saying that "it was really relaxing" for her to play in Dickinson's master class, and that the relaxation carried over to our ensemble Prelude performance later that afternoon. Danielle commented that while she was watching Dickinson, she noticed that he "said a lot of stuff about breathing. You could actually see the students, after he talked to them, concentrate on their own breathing. It makes me realize, I often kind of write it off, but you have to remember to take a really low breath, because it made a huge difference in the students' playing."

Danielle and I laughed as we remembered the "Yoga for Trumpet Players" seminar which we talked the rest of our ensemble, and some of our parents, into attending with us. We also both loved the Wednesday night concert inside Manchester Cathedral. This was my favorite concert of all that I attended during this year's conference, because of the way the beautiful performance space was so well-integrated into the performance and used to enhance the music. Listening to the church organ and Baroque-style trumpets inside the cathedral was almost like traveling back in time.

The Conference in Retrospect

Looking back on the conference, we could find few things to improve on. Danielle suggested more youth and female trumpeters. Also, she said, "I think the jazz tends to be late at night, and if they had more towards the daytime more people could go see it." We look forward to hearing more variety in the styles of music – "It would be cool to hear different people playing different varieties of music, to see what their style is," explains Rebecca.

When I asked what they learned from the experience of attending the Manchester ITG conference, Mike joked, "Don't try to tour England on crutches!" Mike had badly sprained his ankle playing ultimate frisbee on the last day of school, and was still limping by the time he had to leave for England. On a more serious note, Abby explained that "at the conference you see so many different levels of trumpet playing that it really shows you where you are, the different levels of playing, and how to get to the other levels. It teaches you, 'Okay, I'm here, this is how you get to there,' it helps you so much in your trumpet playing, and it gives you an inspiration for your trumpet playing. . . . From listening to all these people you can also recognize the different levels and see where other people are, so it really makes you appreciate music a lot more." Danielle and Rebecca agreed, also saying that they both benefitted from the experience of playing in a master class.

There are so many things about the ITG conference that have made us want to come back over the years. Mike said he loves "playing expensive trumpets I could never afford" at the vendors' exhibits. Danielle liked "seeing people there successive years. . . . I think I've seen Frank Campos there every year, and I saw Tiger Okoshi there [for the second year in a row] this year. . . . I just like seeing people every year, you kind of get to know them – even though you seem that just that one [time of] year, you recognize each other. It's cool that every year you learn a little something from master classes and stuff."

The thing that makes Abby want to come back is "the enthusiasm. Everybody was like, 'Yay, it's so great that you're so young and you're doing this, we appreciate it,' and they were all extremely nice and forthcoming and complimentary. It was so friendly that I'd really like to come back and do that again."

Getting accolades from other trumpet players who had seen our performance is something that motivates all of us and makes us feel like all of our preparation has payed off. Andrew: "The reception from the other players was really amazing. After we performed, having these professional players come up to us and say how much they enjoyed our performance was really incredible." Rebecca: "It was such an honor, it was really an honor. Tiger Okoshi told me 'good job,' and I was like, 'Wow, this is so great, I would love to come back and have more people commenting on the group!'" Rebecca added that even in the Manchester airport when she was leaving to fly home, someone came up to her and asked if she was part of the Ithaca Trumpet Crew, and congratulated her on our performance. Having someone recognize you and do something as small as say "hi" or "nice job" as you're sitting down in a concert hall at the conference was really special, Abby explained. "The enthusiasm for high school students was just so high that you really want to come back and do that again," she said.

The Crew Does Great Britain

The opportunity not only to play at the ITG conference, but also to travel to the United Kingdom with our family, was a special experience for all of us. "During the actual time in Manchester that we were playing, we all stayed basically in the same area, so there was a lot of interaction then," explained Andrew. "And then after the series of five days or so when we were preparing and playing, we basically split up and it was more of a family vacation." All of us were there with at least one family member, and everyone got a chance to do something outside of Manchester either before or after the conference.

Abby, who was there with her father, spent two days at a bed-and-breakfast in Wales beforehand. "I couldn't really enjoy anything there, because I was extremely nervous about the playing and everything," she remembered. "Actually, my most vivid memory of Wales is practicing in a parking lot out on the side of the road, because I needed to practice before the conference, and I couldn't play in the bed-and-breakfast. So my dad drove me out to a parking lot out in the middle of Wales, and I just took out my trumpet and played. That is something I will remember for a very long time," she complained melodramatically.

True enough, those of us who were abroad before the conference learned the difficulties of playing a very loud instrument away from home. Mrs. Dunnick, realizing that if we were traveling we would need more than our own self-discipline to keep practicing in the days leading up to the conference, sent home a letter to all of our parents asking them to encourage us to keep playing. Suddenly, our parents became "the practice Nazis," in the words of Abby. Rebecca, who was there with her parents and twin sister, was first in London and then came to Manchester a few days before everyone else. Her parents planned for her to practice every morning they were in Manchester in a practice room at the Royal Northern College of Music, where the conference was being held. I was traveling in Scotland and northern England for a week before the conference with my mother, and I too had the unique experience of practicing in a parking lot, this time in Troon, a town in southwestern Scotland. I also learned how to muffle my sound by playing into a pillow when I came home after midnight from a long day in Edinburgh, only to remember that I hadn't yet practiced trumpet that day!

Andrew was smart enough to save his touristing until after the conference, when he wouldn't have to worry about the commitment to practice. He and his parents and older sister did a “lightning tour” of the UK. “We spent a couple of days in Wales, went up to northern England, then just kind of went a little ways into Scotland – the Tweed Valley and Edinburgh,” he said.

Peter spent time in Germany with his mother for a little over a week before flying to Manchester to join us at the conference. Michael and his parents were able to rent an apartment in London through Ithaca College for the week before the conference. Danielle explained her trip: "My mom and I took trains and stayed in youth hostels throughout Wales, before the conference. It was raining the whole time, but that made it feel even more English! It was beautiful with the green hills, and we got to see this kind of Stonehenge thing that had been around for like 5,000 years. The whole age of England is incredible, because in America it's like, 'Oh my gosh, it's 100 years old!' But in England it's like, 'Oh my gosh, it's 1,000 years old!'"

Conversation then turned to English food, which got a unanimous thumbs-down from the group. Abby complained, "It was terrible, I starved. I went down to skin and bones – it was too greasy!" Andrew asked if anyone unwittingly bought a "full English breakfast," and Rebecca exclaimed, "Yes, I didn't know what it was! I thought, okay, bacon, eggs, toast. But no – there were mushrooms, ham, hot-dog-sized sausages – those were disgusting, I didn't even want to look at it – really runny eggs, tomatoes, and beans. Baked beans?!" But despite the complaints, we all found things we liked to eat in England. We stayed away from the more disgusting of Britain's traditional foods, like black pudding and bangers and mash, but almost everyone liked fish and chips, which could be bought everywhere. We also found some good places in Manchester to buy simple sandwiches for lunch, and everyone agreed that the foreign food, especially Indian and Chinese, was particularly good.

What was our favorite thing about the UK? Everyone had a different answer. . . .

Andrew: "I guess I’d have to say the ruins. Not necessarily the mansions that are still standing, the Renaissance-age ones. But the really old ruins that are left over – the castles, the fortifications. We stopped at Hadrian’s Wall to see what was left of the oldest Roman fort there, which was pretty much just lines of rocks in the ground by this point. It was really amazing to see these things that were built so long ago – nothing in America comes close."

Rebecca: "The old library in Manchester [at Chetham's school of music]. It's really cool to see that, especially in a different country."

Abby: "The sheer age of some of the things there, it was just monumental. A lot of the churches. . . . We went to Westminster Cathedral, and so seeing the graves of a lot of the authors of the things I’ve read, in Poet’s Corner, was really quite amazing. The architecture there, because it’s so old, was really different from anything you can see in the United States. I also liked the Tower of London, because that features in so many books and movies and stuff that actually seeing it is really cool."

Mike: "The accents!"

Danielle: "The physical – the churches and the cathedrals . . . the hills and stuff like that."

I guess I'd have to say that for me, the best thing about England was just seeing another culture, and seeing how in many ways we're the same, but also in many ways very different. I also loved the fact that my mom and I hadn't planned where we would stay on our trip ahead of time – it was so much fun just driving on the tiny English roads; stopping at ruins on the side of the road and learning new things; and eating while watching the World Cup at real English pubs in small towns.

For all of these reasons and more, the experience of traveling in the UK and being fortunate enough to be able to perform at this year's ITG conference is one that none of us will ever forget.

Looking Back on Our Performances

Memorizing all three of our pieces, playing two incredible performances, and traveling to the UK to play is really a "high-water mark," as Abby put it, for the Ithaca Trumpet Crew. We can't ever hope to do much better than that. "I was pleased with my performance, and I was very proud of everyone else, because they had their best performances,” she said. “We all had really good performances at the same time – for once! It was really exciting, and I had so much fun." Andrew agreed, saying, "It was really one of the few opportunities that the group came together and played at a really high level. . . . The fact that it was Mrs. Dunnick's birthday made it really special!" That Mrs. Dunnick was happy to spend July 3rd, her birthday, helping us to perform at the ITG conference says something for how much she cares about our ensemble. And I think we were able to give her a nice birthday present – our performance was a real tribute to her ability to teach us and to bring us together as a group.

The chance to play a small part in the all-star July 4th concert was also a very special experience for the Crew. Dr. Dunnick had originally suggested the idea that we could play the first half of Dana Wilson's arrangement of America, and segue into Jim Olcott's famous arrangement of the piece as part of the July 4th celebrations. When we found out a few months ago that Olcott's arrangement would be played by the ITG Board of Directors, and that we were playing second-to-last in the big July 4th concert, we were very excited.

Playing America on July 4th was in many ways more fun than our Prelude performance the previous afternoon. It was the piece we knew the best and had been practicing for the longest, "so we could just really take the time to have lots of fun with it," explained Abby. We were relaxed and feeling less pressured after our successful first performance. We were still a little nervous, though – we'd be playing for a bigger audience, and we'd only been able to practice with the Board of Directors once, that very afternoon. But all went well, and everyone was thrilled with being able to perform in the midst of professionals. "It was really fun to be actually out on stage playing with the professionals," Andrew said. "The fact that we started, and they came up on the same stage right away, on the same piece – that was awesome."

"We got to go down and take a bow on the Fourth of July concert!" Abby said excitedly. "We hadn't actually thought we were going to be going down on stage [to bow after the piece], but when they were waving us down we were so excited. . . . When the orchestra people in back of us [the RNCM Wind Orchestra] started stamping their feet – that was like, the best moment of my life!"

Looking Forward to the Future

The last question on my list of interview questions was one that everyone had been thinking about for a long time. “Will we hear you again next year in Fort Worth?”

Everyone agreed that they would love to do it again, but that with all the things going on next year, it's really going to be hard to get back together. And really, things couldn't have been any better than they were this year. In Andrew's words, "I’ve enjoyed the three years we’ve done, but I don’t think we’re going to get it together to go to the conference again. I think we’ll keep the ensemble together to an extent – get together, play, probably do some performances. But Manchester was kind of the high point – international performance is every young performer’s dream."

Making time in everyone's schedules was hard enough this year, and with Peter and Andrew becoming seniors next year, things will be even more difficult. More importantly, Mrs. Dunnick will not have nearly as much time next year as she was able to kindly give us in getting ready for Manchester.

Explained Danielle, "A lot of the reason that we've practiced so relentlessly is because of Mrs. Dunnick, and she's going to be taking over Dr. Dunnick's position [while he's on sabbatical next year], and so if she's unable to help us practice, I think that will be a big dent in our ability to stick together as a group." We tried having just one rehearsal this past year without Mrs. Dunnick there, and it was a complete failure. She is essential to keeping our group together and inspiring us to play the best we can. "She is able to hear stuff we can't hear, and she's able to motivate us and make us practice and stick together as a group," continued Danielle. "She helps us hear each other, and she has lots of creative ideas for how we should play and how we should make the songs more real, I think, and more musical. And so if she's not able to lead us, it would be a lot harder for us to stick together."

The good news, though, is that even if we won't be going to next year's conference in Fort Worth, Texas, the Ithaca Trumpet Crew will not die out altogether. Everyone is interested in getting together just for fun and playing some new pieces. Michael added, "Actually, I've had easily 20 people ask me when we're performing next, so people would want to hear us perform in the fall." Having that kind of recognition and encouragement in the community is one of the things that I love about playing together as an ensemble.

Abby said, "We're definitely going to play around Ithaca – just get the ensemble together and have a couple of reunion practices and performances. I'd definitely like to keep the ensemble together, even if we don't get to travel to Fort Worth."