Well folks, it's one more semester with The McGrew Factor and then you're done! This is the third time in the last . . . oh . . . twenty years or so that we have offered a course like ICA. This semester we are going to try on "obsessively organized" for size and see how we all like it. This site will serve as a general vent for (1) our euphoric expressions as we soak our souls in the glories of orchestral music, and (2) our teeth-gnashing rants as we clumsily come to grips with the challenges of orchestration. I fear that I will forever be just another starry-eyed student with you in the face of the vast, vast world of musical possibility latent within an orchestra. After years of orchestrating experience it still just takes one well-performed live orchestral performance of a great masterwork to make us feel like dedicating a lifetime to this study . . . or just quietly folding up and putting away our own dreadful orchestrations forever. It is not our goal to achieve greatness; our goal is to receive inspiration from an encounter with it.