Andy Zweibel

I have never been a chef. Before I came to college, the extent of my kitchen prowess was heating up canned soup, cooking store-bought pasta, and heating up frozen dinners in the microwave. I never really had to make anything more; my dad was the chef of the family, and put together some wonderful creations for dinner each night. When I started here at UM, the access I had to cooking appliances decreased, and my food consumption was limited to restaurants, the dining hall, and anything microwaveable.

However, things are now different. I have just moved into an apartment with a full kitchen, and have realized that eating at restaurants for every meal is just not financially an option. As such, I’ve started to do more grocery shopping, and making my own food. As I said, I am no Bobby Flay. However, I’m starting to get bored with spaghetti, Ramen noodles, and chicken nuggets, so I’m going to start experimenting with new recipes. This experience, of course, is likely to be a comical one, as I struggle through preparing most likely the simplest of entrees! For this reason, I’m going to try to share some of these experiences with you!

Being my compulsive self, I need to have a format for each of these posts, instead of just rambling on about cooking, so my format (for now, at least) will be as follows:

Entree:

Side Dishes (if any):

Materials:

Recipe:

Pictures:

What I Learned:

Hopefully, the “What I Learned” area will let me recap any earth-shattering (and prehaps comical!) conclusions I came to during my time in the kitchen! By the way, I’m not trying to steal an idea from the movie “Julie and Julia,” I just figured you guys could use a laugh or two

My first experience took place a few nights ago, when I went out on a limb and tried making Hamburger Helper. I’ll have a post up on it soon!

In addition, if you have any recipes you enjoy making (of any difficulty level!), I encourage you to head over to my Contact page, and shoot me a message with the recipe! Who knows, I might even prepare it as part of this little experiment

A lot has happened in the month-and-a-half since my last post here. It can all be summed up in three words, however: I’m Getting Old!

While generally speaking, 21 is not an age that most would consider old, there have been a few things that have happened over the past 6 or so weeks that have made me much more aware of the fact that I’m “growing up” and soon will be in the “real world.” Allow me to list a few:

1. Turning 21 – Yes, the biggest sign of my aging hit me on the 21st of July, when I celebrated my 21st birthday. While the evening was a blast, and a lot of fun to share with great friends, one of them said it best when he noted, “it’s all downhill from here!” 21 is really the last age at which there is any “reward” for a birthday (for those of you out of country-if there are any-I am now allowed to consume alcohol), so my friend made a great point when he pointed out that from here on out, there really isn’t anything to look forward to on a birthday except the knowledge that you’ve lived another year.
2. Staffing a Band Camp - I have now participated in 7 band camps (plus one drum major camp) as a member of a marching band. In early August, however, I had the opportunity to work as a staff member for a band camp for the first time, helping a friend who recently graduated from UMiami with her second band camp as a teacher. This was a really eye-opening experience, and helped me develop my marching band teaching skills immensely. On top of that, it was downright fun!
3. UM Band Camp – I began my third year as a member of the Band of the Hour this August, with band camp here in Miami. This year, I hold two leadership positions in the band; I am the Band Captain, as well as a Section Leader for the trumpet section. It’s hard to believe that I am starting my third year with the band, and even harder to believe that I only have one year left after this one.
4. Junior-Level Classes – Since the first day I arrived on campus in 2007, I heard horror stories of the insane course load of Junior year in the Music Education program. I heard stories of people averaging 3 hours of sleep for the whole year, having to skip meals to finish projects, and having no sense of social life. While the semester has just started, it seems as though these stories may have been slight exaggerations. What really struck me, however, was the realization that all the projects I have heard the “older” Music Ed majors complain about for the past two years, the projects that classified someone as “old” once they had to do them, are now being found on my syllabi. Now, I’m the old person, who will probably be complaining about the massive load of projects an assignments come November.

All of these events, of course have been positive ones in my life, but when you put them all together, they are also a stark reminder that pretty soon, I’ll be graduating and starting a new stage of my life. Scary, huh?

In other news, the first football game of the season is just over a week away, as the Band of the Hour and the University of Miami family will travel up to Tallahassee this weekend to watch the ‘Canes take on rival Florida State in a prime-time game on ESPN on Labor Day. Keep an eye out for me on ESPN, and stay tuned for updates on this blog, and on my Twitter page!

I’ve always known I wanted to go into music education. Even as an elementary school student, my biggest idol was the school’s music teacher. When I reached middle school, though, I knew immediately that I wanted to be a band director. This was confirmed even more as I graduated to the 9th grade, and by the time I hit my Junior year of High School, there was absolutely no question that I was going to be a High School band director when I “grew up.” It was with this attitude that I began my degree at UM. High School band or bust!

In fact, I never really had any experience teaching or working with elementary students at all until this semester. I had one teaching experience back in the fall of my freshman year with a beginning trumpet player, but other than that, all my experience so far had been with high schoolers. After all, it’s those students I wanted to work with as a teacher-why bother with the elementary kids, anyway? In all honesty, I think a big part of it was intimidation. I was comfortable working with teenagers, but I had so little experience with the younger kids that I was worried if I would be as effective working with them.

Despite my reluctance, this semester presented me with two opportunities to hone my skills working with elementary-level students. The first came through one of my courses at UM-entitled “Classroom and Behavior Management.” The course title is very self-explanatory, and the class comes with a 20-hour field experience component which must be at an elementary school. I was assigned to Frances S. Tucker Elementary, with Mr. Kurt Engbretson in the music classroom. While most of my experience in Mr. E’s classroom has been observing, I had the opportunity to do a mini-lesson with the kids a few weeks ago, in which I taught them about the families of instruments (brass, woodwind, string, percussion) and demonstrated my trumpet for a bit. It went surprisingly well, and the kids really loved the trumpet demo. Their favorite part was my demonstrating the “wah wah” characteristics of the harmon mute. I ran into a bit of trouble with talking/behavior as the students became more excited with the material, but once I reminded them that “the more time you guys spend talking the less fun trumpet stuff we get to talk about,” the room quieted down! All in all, the lessons (I taught three of the same lesson-to 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders) went extremely well! I left the school feeling great about how I was able to create such interest in a subject for the students!

My second opportunity came to me as a member of Tau Beta Sigma. TBS, which is a service organization for the college band, also has a national initiative for chapters to help local troops of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts gain their badges/patches in music. As such, we welcomed about 35 girl scouts to the UM campus this past Saturday, for a music workshop. The girls ranged in age from 3rd grade to 6th, and were split into four rotations. The members of TBS who were present also were split up, and I had the opportunity to work with my good friend and fellow sister Tyson and the scouts on “action songs” for the afternoon. In our rotation, we sang songs that had actions associated with them. We chose four songs, with increasing levels of difficulty, which culminated in the “Joe” song about the man who works in the button factory-by the end of the “lesson,” everyone in the room was pushing pretend buttons with their elbows, knees, head, butt, and tongue! It was a blast, and all the girls had an incredible time. It was a blast having the opportunity to sing these songs with the girls, and have as much fun as they all were! It was another successful day of working with elementary-age students!

Have these experiences changed my preference as to which level I want to teach? Not at all-I’m still gung-ho towards High School band. That being said, though, I am no longer afraid of the elementary classroom, and now am looking forward to my course in teaching elementary general music next fall! These experiences have helped me expand my teaching ability and confidence, and hopefully will open the door for my becoming a much more well-rounded music educator!

Just a quick reminder from an earlier post that the Frost Wind Ensemble has a concert tonight at 8 pm in Gusman Concert Hall. Admission is free if you’re in the Miami area, and if you’re not, you can listen to the concert live via audio stream here (hopefully the equipment will be working this time-sorry to those of you who tried to listen in to the Symphonic Winds concert last week). The program will be conducted almost entirely by Thomas Sleeper (orchestra conductor, in lieu of Director of Bands Gary Green, who is on sabbatical) and will include:

Xi Wang – Music for Piano, Percussion, and Wind Ensemble
Simone Gomez, Cliff Sutton-Percussion; Marina Radiushina-Piano

Sweelinck-Variations on “Mein junges Leben hat ein End” arr. Rciker
Lauren Denney Wright-Conductor

Stinson-Cog (World Premiere)

Sleeper-Concerto for Trumpet
Craig Morris-Trumpet

While the Xi Wang is the only piece I will be performing on, this entire concert is going to be an incredible experience, so I would urge anyone who can to listen in and enjoy a night of fantastic music! As an added bonus, three of the four composers on this program (Xi Wang, Scott Stinson, Thom Sleeper) will be in attendance at the concert! Hope to see you there!

Over the past week or so, the student leadership team for the 2009 University of Miami “Band of the Hour” has been announced, and now that the entire team is set, I want to congratulate everyone on a job well done! Here are the 2009 student leaders:

Drum Majors: Jeff Lawson, Brad Newman, Stephanie Gust
Band Captain: Andy Zweibel
Piccolo Section Leaders: Alyssa Kassler, Nicholas Heilman
Clarinet Section Leader: Tim Plitnik
Alto Sax Section Leader: Dan Sprague
Trumpet Section Leaders: Andy Zweibel, Sam Guffey
Mellophone Section Leaders: Nina Knific, Sam Bapty
Trombone Section Leader: Marissa Wites
Baritone Section Leader: Luke Cramer
Sousaphone Section Leader: Mike O’Brien
Drumline Captain: Victor Gonzalez
Guard Captains: Liz Menne, Kayla Kasel
Dance Captains: Taylor Prandini, Destiny Guild

Contratulations to everyone! I’m looking forward to a great season!