It’s hard to believe that our exciting debut at Caramoor was already more than two months ago. I hope you all have had a chance to relax during this mild summer, and are ready to gear up for our next exciting year of concerts, our 27th season of great music.

The audition committee heard an outstanding array of players last evening, and I am eager to introduce our newest members on Monday night.

Our first rehearsal – this Monday evening, September 8 – will be held in the Scarsdale Middle School Band Room. Go to the Rehearsal This Week page for directions and the rehearsal plan. We are especially grateful to Jessica Slotwinski for helping us to secure this space when we suddenly learned that Tarrytown Music Hall could not allow us to hold rehearsal there, because of delays in their extensive foundation reconstruction project. We expect to be back at TMH on September 15.

I’m very excited to read and rehearse this Fall program with you. As we announced, this concert will be sponsored by the Westchester Kensico Cemetery, and will be performed as the culmination of a year-long celebration of their 125th Anniversary. All the works on the program connect in some way to a concept associated with the cemetery, or a luminary buried there. From Sergei Rachmaninoff to Lou Gehrig, those interred at Kensico form an incredibly diverse and interesting fabric of humanity. Please mark your calendars for Sunday afternoon, October 5, when we have a guided trolley tour of the cemetery planned. I took this tour in July, and I now look at all the compositions on this program in a new light. I think you will, too, and so I hope you’ll join me on October 5, 2:30-4:30 pm. Refreshments will be provided as well.

This season, we are bringing back guest conductors Tom McCauley and Emily Threinen, in addition to trumpet soloists Bill Owens and Chris Venditti — who will play together on the Winter concert. Dr. Peter Martin, Director of Bands from the University of Southern Maine, will join us for the Fall concert. Our own Chris Carbone, tuba, will be the featured soloist in May, and Broadway baritone, Matthew Scott, will also perform with us in November. We will begin to rehearse our Chicago exchange program early in the season, in order to work toward the very best performance ever when we take the stage in Evanston in June. We will have detailed information about the trip to share in the coming weeks, and we will be asking for individual commitments by October 1.

I am looking forward to Monday night! Please plan your travel so we can start promptly at 7:30 pm at Scarsdale Middle School. Drive carefully — see you then.