This post will chronicle a road trip to the National Saxophone Alliance Region 9 Conference in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.and lecture-demonstration by the Duo Gillis Cunningham.

After flying from Boca Raton, Florida to Saskatoon, the trip necessitated an eight-hundred-mile round-trip journey across the frigid winter prairies of Saskatchewan and Alberta, Canada.

Along the route we encountered many obstacles and objectives, including wandering moosei and migrating snow snakes.

The adventure also included a trip down memory lane through the municipalities of Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat, memorialized in the  immortal Guess Who hit song “Running Back to Sasaktoon.”

Snow snakes aside, Lethbridge in southern Alberta is a picturesque local in western Canada, just north of the US border. Its highlights include tons of grazing deer, and a converted watertower-topped restaurant.

The business end of the road trip involved a lecture-recital titled: “Collaborating and Composing: Traditional and Non-Traditional Instruments Interacting within Re-created Acoustical Environments,”  which chronicled and laid-out the long-time compositional and performative processes of the Duo Gillis Cunningham, developed during a twenty-year collaborative partnership.

Total Eclipse [of the Sun] – Live at Lethbridge