Hi, my name is Jennifer Graham (formerly Jennifer Hansler). I am an Alumni (1981 - 1987). I have nothing but wonderful memories of the Colonial Musketeers (camping in Wildwood, NJ each summer, Disney World & Sea World, Maryland Musters, Washington DC, Busch Gardens and Williamsburg, Old Saybrook, the many competitions in NYC and various areas around the tri-state).

Anyway, I am now married with a 7 year old son (Mackenzie) and 5 year old daughter (Madelyn). I have a degree in Hotel/Restaurant Management, and my husband (Gus) is a Managing Engineer with Plug Power. We live in Upstate NY (just outside of Albany).

I still have my fife as well as some sheet music (my favorite is Dixie, our old competition piece) and every once in awhile I play for the kids and they dance.

Email Jenn at jgraha1@nycap.rr.com

My name is Jason Drake, and I
guess I'm an old-timer. I signed up in the mid 80's at the behest of my next-door neighbor, Jeff Van Walendael, a name I see has made itonto the list already. He and Brian Corley used to drive me down to the firehouse on Saturday morning at 10 AM (no matter that it was a mere 3 blocks away) for two hours of drumline "lessons" every week with Patrick Feeney, Mike Murphy, Chris Dunn, Matt Olans, and a few others
if I remember right. We'd finish as the firehouse horn blared noon. And, we did end up learning the stand piece...eventually.

So many memories bound up in the corps. Seeing all those names on thelist brought a flood of them back. Please add my name when you get achance. I'm at New York University (still within stiking distance ofHackettspatch) finishing up a PhD in Literature. Still have my sticks and sling in a box somewhere and the pictures of the old folks certainly provide some temptation...

Email Jason at jason.drake@nyu.edu

 

Congratulations David!

Concert Review:
'Soldier Songs' packs heartrending wallop
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Monday, July 31, 2006

Composer David Little is not yet 30 and is still working on his Ph.D., yet his list of classical works is as long as your arm. If his latest, "Soldier Songs," premiered on Friday by Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble at City Theatre on the South Side, is any indication, quality equals quantity in a big way.

Commissioned by PNME and composed over a span of 18 months, the work explores the dichotomous relationship of war and our society. "We live in a culture where violence thrives," Little writes, "where our children play war games and pretend to kill one another for fun." The 50-minute cycle is a semi-theatrical piece that follows the experience of war from the consequence-less age of a child through the age of a warrior, where the consequences are real and severe, on to the reflective stage of a veteran.

Little wrote the texts based on interviews with some half-dozen military personnel. To add impact, although the music was powerful enough, slides and videos were projected onto a large upstage screen. Little's compositional language is eclectic and diverse, encompassing 19th-century Romanticism and polytonality, percussive counterpoint and musical theatre lyricism, semi-tone tuning and diatonic harmonies. The only selection on the program, "Soldier Songs" is a challenging work in both musical material and subject matter. "In all honesty I can say that this is not a piece that many professional ensembles would have the courage to tackle," says Little. Led by artistic director Kevin Noe, the PNME handled it masterfully.

With each of the 11 songs as gripping as the last, the cycle was a signature vehicle for bass-baritone Timothy Jones. He adroitly adapted his masterful technique and flawless diction to the core of each tune. He conveyed the brashness of "Boom! Bang! Dead!," the roboticism of "Still Life with Tank and iPod" and the angst of "Two Marines," which began as a painful lament and morphed into a glowing paean to peace activism.

Alyssa Cadwalader ('92-'04) is currently attending the University of Iowa working on a Master of the Arts in Music Therapy. She works at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in the Department of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery - examining music perception abilities of cochlear implant users. She lives in Cedar Rapids, IA.

E-mail Alyssa at: alyssa-cadwalader@uiowa.edu