The Recording Academy has set up a Music Education Advocacy Action Center on their website. The most interesting aspect of the site is the ability easily to contact your elected officials in support of music education. From Neil Portnow’s (President,...
The schedule for the IGSMA District Contest at Clarendon Hills Middle School of March 10, 2007 has been released. The McCracken Middle School Symphonic Band will be performing at 2:00 PM. We have not yet received the Swing Choir times....
MCCRACKEN MIDDLE SCHOOL SYMPHONIC BAND RECEIVES THE SOUSA FOUNDATION’S SUDLER SILVER CUP AWARD The John Philip Sousa Foundation has announced that the McCracken Middle School Band from Skokie, Illinois has been selected to receive the coveted “Sudler Silver Cup” award...
The last few days have been spent enjoying the holidays and recovering from a massive cold/flu thing that’s been running through our home. The Warm-Up The concert, and everything surrounding it, was a lot of fun. We had a healthy,...
Just a quick post to announce that the Midwest Clinic has posted a couple selections from our concert on their Band Performance Archive. You’ll need at least the free version of Real Audio Player to watch the selections. —–
Following our Midwest performance, the McCracken Middle School Symphonic Band learned that we were selected to receive the John Philips Sousa Foundation “Sudler Cup.” The Sudler Cup’s purpose is to identify, recognize and honor junior high school and middle school...
Midwest Clinic Blog Archive As part of our Midwest Clinic preparations, Mr. De Stefano kept a blog on the Midwest Clinic website. While it’s no longer on their site, we’ve continued to archive it on our site. Concert Performance Friday,...
Okay. Now I’m nervous. It’s 10:30, the kids are starting to arrive to setup for our warm-up at 11:00. We’ll spend about an hour lightly warming up, as well as singing and talking through some of the stuff before loading...
Monday was great. Our pre-conference performance was everything that I had hoped for and more. I’m guessing we had about 700 people there. It was an amazing audience…extremely supportive and energetic. It was a very strong performance, which really helped...
As we started this whole process, I remember a ton of people telling me how fast the four months would go. In spite of the fact that I believed them, I’m still stunned by how they have just flown by....