James Christian 2005 DCA tenor solo - 1st place video

Highlights from James Christian's winning performance at DCA 2005 The solo is entitled "Five". This is probably my least favorite solo I have ever done. I have only posted it for the sake of completeness, since my 2004 and 2006 solos are already posted. Here's some background information: I had started writing this solo over the summer, and I got carried away and ended up with a 7-minute solo. IMO, it was constructed beautifully and had all sorts of recurring themes, great variety, etc., but it was just too long. As I was working on it, I kept thinking of more and more things to add, and it just got to be way too long. I got married in August of 2005, and my wife and I took out the scissors and chopped a bunch of sections out of the solo over our honeymoon (about four weeks before the contest). I realized that a couple of minutes needed to be chopped out, but then the solo just sounded too choppy. Over the next several weeks, I tried adding back in some good transitions to make the new version flow better, but it didn't come anywhere close to the quality of the original 7-minute version. Well, the DCA contest was on the first weekend of September (the weekend after Hurricane Katrina hit the coast) in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I&E was Friday night. We had intended to get to Scranton late Thursday night, get a good night's sleep, and do the contest the next day. Unfortunately, we had major traffic problems on the drive there, and we didn't get there until Friday afternoon. We ...