I’ve been fortunate enough to visit the Midwest Clinic in Chicago many times and one of the highlights is seeing the Chicago Symphony Brass perform. In 2013, they performed a selection of piece by Mason Bates called Alternative Energy.

Roughly a month after that I heard a small band from Missouri perform a piece by composer Alex Shapiro called Paper Cut. These two compositions, while wildly differing in style and complexity, did have one thing in common — the addition of recorded/sampled media.

I enjoyed them both (for different reasons of course) and thought to myself, “We have to play a piece like this for our end of year concert.” I set to work creating a piece that would meet the needs of the Lee’s Summit West Concert Band and would be entertaining for the large crowd of parents who come to this concert every year.

There was also a chance to feature a couple of excellent musicians. Senior Isaiah Carter plays drums and one of our teachers Bob Harvey played trumpet. As an added bonus, I put 5 cameras to work recording the performance so we could use the multi-cam footage for a project in my Digital Media class at Summit Technology Academy. That’s called cross curricular in the world of education, which probably makes me the world’s greatest teacher. With that in mind, please enjoy the performance of “Glitch.”