Back in the States

Man its been a while since I updated this blog. Now that I am back in the states I have faster internet connection and sending one of these blogs does take a couple of hours. I arrived on June 16th and will be going back to Ethiopia on August 8th. Currently, I am taking a break from studying and updating this blog.

I am at Southern Oregon University starting my masters with this program called American Band College (ABC). It has been a great experience so far. However, I do not have any time off whatsoever. We will not get a break until we complete the program on July 10.


The pictures that you see are some friends and students I met in ethiopia.
It has been an Excellent experience here. We have some very knowledgable clinicians and excellent composers and conductors to study with. Since I am the only person from Ethiopia I was requested to hold the Ethiopian flag at the 4th of July performance while the arrangement of the Ethiopian National Anthem (which I arranged) is performed by the 200 piece ABC directors band.

We sight-read it yesterday and I was requested to sing it in Amharic. (Yeah, crazy) I never thought that I would have to sing the arrangement in its native tongue. It went very well though. Up until my mentor told me that David Holsinger may be conducting it at the concert. No stress right. A well-known composer who has left his difinitive mark on the musical world is conducting a piece I arranged. Yeah man, this is definitely crazy.

But of coarse my greatest concern is my exit exam which will be in 3 days is on my mind. Now the cool thing is that on my entrance exam I only had 6 weakness areas. The average is 15. So I did pretty well.

If you would like to know my schedule for the summer it is located below. I will not have a cell while I am here so you can feel free to email me at cameronc1@hotmail.com.




Take Care

July 11 Depart from Ashland, OR and arrive in Bothell, WA
July 15 Arrive in Detroit
August 8 Depart from Michigan. Back to Ethiopia