Calendar Updated
Please notice a couple changes to our calendar. The first is August 21 & 22. On the 21st, we will not rehearse, but will meet in the afternoon for our Midwest Clinic photo shoot for our concert program and publicity photos. We’ll meet at 12:00 PM (noon) in full concert uniform, bus over to the Northshore Center for the Performing Arts, and be back to school around 2:30 PM. On August 22nd we’ll rehearse from 10:00 AM until noon. At this rehearsal we will sightread through our entire Midwest Program for the first time. Finally, on Saturday morning, September 16, we’ll kick off the District 73.5 Foundation’s Annual Gus Pausz Walk-a-Thon by performing for the participants.
I don’t anticipate any further changes.
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Posted: July 30, 2006 | PermaLink
Midwest Pre-Conference Performances
Buried in the back of the binder we received from the Midwest Office at the June meeting is a green sheet titled “Program Planning Suggestions” from the Board of Director’s Performance Coordinating Committee. There’s some great advice on this page dealing with program selection and pacing. Even a suggestion to make sure the students drink plenty of water before the performance to avoid dehydration since the ballroom stages become quite warm.
Number 8 reads: “If you have an opportunity to perform your Midwest program two or three times before you arrive in Chicago, your students will know how to pace themselves and have much more confidence in their performance.”
This is something I’d really like to do. One of the things I’m struggling with, as I’m sure the other directors are is well, is striking a balance in the scheduling, especially in December. Our classes run through December 22, which means our students will essentially miss three days of school attending and performing at the conference. It’s important that I’m sensitive to this fact…both in the amount of school they miss prior to the performance and in terms of evening commitments leading up to our performance.
We are trying, as best we can, to make our “official” Midwest Preview Concert as much of a Skokie event as we can. It will be part benefit concert, part celebration, and hopefully a good time for everyone who attends. We’ve rented the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts on December 18, the Monday before Midwest, for this performance. We’ve never done anything like this before, so it’s very exciting. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while and hope that it’ll be something we’ll be able to hang onto for future years.
Having this concert four days before our Midwest performance is nice for a couple reasons. It’s close enough to our concert for it to feel like part of the Midwest experience for the kids, but far enough away that we still have several rehearsals following it to put the finishing touches on anything that the performance exposes. I’m also excited that most, if not all, of our guest conductors will be able to join us for this concert as well. We’re optimistic that we’ll be able to draw a nice sized audience for this concert. We are also actively searching for a sponsor to underwrite the costs associated with the performance.
The rest of our concerts have been scheduled as well:
August 18 Band Camp Concert
September 27 Exchange concert with Lincoln Middle School (Park Ridge)
October 24 Symphonic Band Concert
November 13 Symphonic Band Concert
November 20 Concert at Meyer Primary School
December 7 Winter Concert with McCracken Choirs
December 18 Midwest Preview Concert
December 22 Midwest Clinic Performance
This isn’t much different from our normal schedule. We don’t usually have the mid-November concert, and with school starting significantly earlier this year we were able to slip in the late September concert. Once our program is approved by the Midwest Board I’ll break down how our preparation of the pieces will fit into this framework.
The only thing left to figure out is when to perform our complete Midwest program for the school. Ideally we’d be able to find a time to play the full program for the middle school and another time to play for our elementary school. This would give us the three performances of the program prior to our Midwest performance. We’ll see what the administration and I are able to work out.
(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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Posted: July 27, 2006 | PermaLink
Summer Preparations
It’s been a little while since I’ve posted. While a lot of work has gone into preparing for the school year, there are a lot of loose ends that need to be tied before I post in greater detail.
Band Camp
We don’t normally have much in the summer. When I first started teaching I’d offer lessons and spend countless hours at school teaching, organizing, and planning. I’m just too old for that now!
After calling around to some directors that have brought groups to Midwest in the past, I found that most held some sort of summer band either in the form of a camp, or weekly rehearsals. For some, it was something they regularly do, and their Midwest preparation was fitted into their normal summer.
Our camp is being modeled after the University of Illinois Summer Youth Music program. I had the privilege of guest conducting one of the junior bands there last summer and was blown away by the experience the kids received. It’s going to be a great week, with rehearsals, sectionals, masterclasses, chamber music, and a concert at the end of the five days.
While I’ll try to post even more specifics later, my basic hope for the camp is to be fun, set the tone and work ethic for the year, and hopefully we’ll be able to cram about a month’s worth of instruction and development into five days.
Fundraising
Other than planning our August camp, our parent group has been meeting to discuss how we’re going to raise funds to pay for our various expenses related to performing at Midwest. The concert program is the largest of these, but our band camp won’t be cheap either.
I’ve learned a lot by visiting the websites of the other performing organizations to see how they plan on raising money for their performances. The Instrumentalist Midwest Profiles of the last separate years were quite helpful as well. We’re taking several of their ideas to incorporate into our campaign. Instead of doing several new activities, we’ve added a little, but will invest most of our energy expanding some of our existing fundraisers.
I’ve got a whole post on our fundraising efforts already finished. It’s just waiting on a couple details to be set before I publish it.
Program
After school let out, I took a couple week break from thinking about our program. I really wish I could say our program is completely set and ready to submit to the Midwest Office for approval, but I’m just not completely happy with it yet. Most of the program is set, with two spots a bit in limbo.
We’ve commissioned a work to premier as the first piece on our program. I got a little bit nervous when I read Greg Snyder’s interview in the Instrumentalist this month. He mentions that commissioning a work his first time around was stressful. He wasn’t specific as to why, though, so I’m trying not to imagine nightmare scenarios in my head. We’ve commissioned this composer before, he writes very well at our level, and I’m sure that what we receive will be exactly what we’re looking for.
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Posted: July 18, 2006 | PermaLink
2006-2007 Calendar
The 2006-2007 School District 73.5 Band Calendar has been posted. Please consider this calendar tentative, especially as it relates to our Midwest Clinic preparation.
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Posted: July 1, 2006 | PermaLink