Band Camp

Well…we just finished our weeklong band camp. Things have been so crazy I haven’t even had a chance to post about it yet. This isn’t something we normally do, but added it in preparations of our performance at Midwest. In fact, I had the great idea of recording the first time through our warm-up chorale and posting the mp3. Unfortunately I thought of that great idea after the rehearsal had started. Oh well…maybe we’ll record next week. It won’t be a true reference of where we’re starting, they’ve made a lot a progress, but might be interesting none-the-less.

I had a few goals for our week:
1) To get a great jump on the year by cramming in about a month of work and pedagogy into the five days.
2) For the band, especially the new members, to develop a sense of belonging and pride in the Symphonic Band.

3) For the end of camp concert, the first concert of the year, to be successful.

It was extremely successful. A tremendous amount of planning, work, and money has gone into providing this experience for the kids. It was an amazing week.

As I mentioned previously, I modeled the camp after ISYM at the University of Illinois. The typical day looked like this:

8:00 – 10:00 Symphonic Band Rehearsal
10:00 – 10:15 Break
10:15 – 11:15 Sectionals
11:15 – 12:00 Lunch

12:00 – 12:50 Brass Choir, Woodwind Choir, Percussion Ensemble, or Masterclasses
12:50 – 1:00 Break
1:00 – 2:00 Small Chamber Groups, Percussion Ensemble, or Masterclasses
2:00 – 2:15 Break
2:15 – 3:45 Symphonic Band Rehearsal

Today, the kids had two performances: a chamber music recital in the afternoon and our Symphonic Band Concert at 7:00. The kids played great. The program was a bit easier than I had originally wanted:

• Majestica – Brian Balmages (FJH, Grade 1+)

• Music for Queen Mary – Henry Purcell, arranged by Robert Garofalo (Grand Mesa, Grade 2)
• Wolsey’s Wilde – William Byrd, arranged by Doug Hartzell (Grand Mesa, Grade 2)
• Battale Pavane – Tielman Susato, arranged by Bob Margolis (Manhattan Beach, Grade 2)
• Psalm 42 – setting by Samuel Hazo (Boosey & Hawkes, Grade 2)
• The Olympic Spirit – John Williams, arranged by Eric Osterling (Jenson/Hal Leonard, Grade 2)

There was some harder stuff in the folder, but it just wasn’t going to happen. Well, it might have happened, but it wouldn’t have been worth it. We invested a bit of time in them early in the week, but after a certain point I just didn’t feel like beating the technique into them. It was the right move, we were able to spend the rest of the week on more important things…tone, pitch, blend, style, and playing expressively.

We had a great staff of 10 sectional coaches that we hired to run the morning sectionals (Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Alto Saxophone, Low WW, Cornet, Horn, Trombone, Tuba/Euphonium, Percussion). While they mostly worked on the band music, they are all excellent teachers and spent time worrying about the long term as well.

Monday and Wednesday afternoons were chamber music times. The band was divided into 12 different small chamber music ensembles guided by 8 chamber music coaches. I’m a bit ashamed to write that this was the first real chamber music experience for most of the kids. The recital went better than it should have given the limited rehearsal time. There were several really nice moments, and only a handful of train wrecks.

Tuesday and Thursday were our masterclass days. We had some fantastic people (freelance musicians, private teachers, DePaul studio professors) come in to give a total of 16 different sessions for our kids.

An enormous amount of information was heaped on the kids this week. I’m sure it’ll take several days and weeks for them (and me!) to sort through and absorb it all.

The ability of the band is pretty close to what I expected it to be, although the kids were much more rusty on Monday than I was hoping they’d be. We have a lot of work to do on our brass tone. The section sound is okay for this time of year because of the strength of our leaders and our solid tuba section, but several of the individual sounds are just too immature. Our oboes made tremendous progress this week in tone development, pitch, and blend. There is more to be done, but I couldn’t be more proud of the effort they put into it this week. Julie DeRoche worked with our clarinets on Thursday, they were a completely different sounding section the next day. Unbelievable.

We have a couple things over the next couple days, nothing necessarily post worthy though. Tomorrow is our first car wash, Monday is our photo shoot for our program and Midwest program book, Tuesday we read through our Midwest program for the first time. We’ll only perform 2 or 3 works from our anticipated program at our next concert on Sept. 27. Now that our program feels more set I’m able to work out the preparation cycle for the music we’ll be performing and the addition pieces I’d like to work on to help us get ready.

(For topic suggestions or questions relating to our Midwest performance I can be contacted via email: cdestefano@skokie735.k12.il.us or through the contact page on our website.)

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