Early Preparations

There’s certainly a lot going on around here. Thank goodness I don’t have to worry about placing 50 or so 14 year olds on an airplane to take them half across the country. Here’s what I’m working on. I’ll fill out more details when I know them.

Midwest Parent Committee

This Sunday is the first meeting of our Midwest Parent Committee. Hopefully we’ll have a good turnout. Since we haven’t had auditions yet, I’ve only invited parents of current 6th and 7th grade Symphonic Band members. This meeting will be a lot of me talking, future meetings will certainly be more collaborative. The main purpose of the group will be to handle the non-musical aspects of our Midwest performance so that I can focus on the music.

Instrument Purchase Plan
For several years, we have had an instrument purchase plan in place. The Midwest Clinic invitation has turned our long term plan to an extremely short term plan. We really need to upgrade our tubas and bassoons. That’s my top priority, but we have several other needs as well. Reworking that plan is at the top of my list.

Instrument Upgrades
This needs to be a bigger priority to me, and I’ll probably begin to push parents upgrading their child’s instruments in my first letter to the 2006-2007 Symphonic Band parents.

Summer Schedule
We’re going to meet approximately two hours a week this summer. We’ll work primarily on fundamentals…chorales and scales…tone and pitch, but will also read through a lot of repertoire trying to fine tune our Midwest program. We’ll have some light sectional work and some of the more inexperienced sections will have some intense sectional work.

I’m most excited about the one-week band camp we’re developing. It’ll be an amazing week that will give us a nice kick-start to the year. I still need to find a way to fund it, but that’s for another post.

Repertoire
Our Midwest Program is slowly taking shape. At least as much as it can at this point. The reservation system for repertoire opens up in early May.

Our liaison from the Midwest Board of Directors has advised not committing to any work, publisher, composer, conductor, or soloist until the perfect program is set. I’m anxious to invite our guest conductors, but have managed to stay patient, even though it’s been difficult. At the same time, I certainly don’t want to commit to three or four guest conductors and then later in the summer realize we’re only playing six tunes.

Midwest Memo #1
We also received our first Midwest Memo this past week. There are a small handful of deadlines approaching. Publicity photos, bios, admin information, etc… Looks like I’ll get that new headshot sooner rather than later. The group photo caught me off guard. We can’t really use the photo that accompanied our application…it’s too orange…no really, the lighting in the Palmer House is kind of strange. Hopefully we’ll be able to get and use the group photo that will be taken at the University of Illinois Superstate Concert Band Festival in two weeks. Otherwise, we’ll just take care of it at school.

Program
Even I’m not sure why I’m worrying about the program right now. It’s the first impression our audience will have of our band, even if it’s only visual. For all our other conference performances, I’ve always designed our program. For Midwest however, I’d like to hire a designer. I’ve spent a few minutes this week getting various quotes from designers and securing an estimate from our printer.

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