GROSSMONT COLLEGE — Dr. Randall Tweed directs Choral and Orchestral Activities here at Grossmont College. Since joining the music faculty in 1986, Tweed has conducted opera, symphony and chorus throughout Southern and Baja California.
Frequently Tweed appears as guest conductor in concert music series throughout Southern California, including the Cabrillo Chamber Orchestra, the United States International Orchestra, Spreckels Organ Society and many educational and church-music concert series.
Dr. Tweed is accustomed to being the go-to person; so Thursday, Oct. 21, with the poise appropriate to a conductor, he addressed the grant-committee of the Associated Students of Grossmont College (ASGC). Tweed’s aim: one
timpani case. The cost: just over $1,000!
Now, to some, that may sound exorbitant. However, consider the following:
1. Tweed shopped around, and so avoided the cost of the typical King Cong case which cost over 50 percent more than the (entirely comparable) case which Tweed has proposed.
2. According to Tweed, a Timpani, itself, costs between $6,000 and $9,000! So, in his presentation, Tweed made clear that, in this instance, the ounce of prevention – in the form of a timpani case – would be worth what would be a ton of cure in the form of replacing a damaged timpani.
3. Consider, most of all, this: a timpani is unarguably essential to an orchestra. And the overall value of the instruments in an 80-piece orchestra? According to Tweed, that would be anywhere from tens of thousands of dollars to even a million dollars or more! The $1,000 is indispensable for this equation.
So Dr. Tweed did get the grant, from the ASGC, for the timpani case.
Which means: the show will go on. Tweed said that for the Grossmont Arts Department, this is a small but welcomed victory, considering that the department was among the hardest hits by budget-cuts.
*
Lindquist is a student in Media Comm 132
