Happy New Year!

We have an exciting year coming up, including our Winter & Spring Concerts, our first-ever Exchange Trip to Chicago, and our second Fourth of July Concert at Caramoor. Please be sure to click on the blog link in this email so you can read this entire post. I have lots of news!

Masters concert postponed

Unfortunately, we have had to postpone the January 10 concert at The Masters School. Thank you to all of you who were willing to commit to the date. Although the school is extremely excited to have us, and we have a quorum of players to perform, we cannot lock in a performance space. We ran into problems with both the Theatre and Gymnasium. I tried booking us back into the Rotunda at Mercy College, but it is already reserved. I also tried Dobbs Ferry High School, but no one has gotten back to me. So we had to decide to pull the plug on the January date. The current plan is to try again for Saturday, March 7. I will put out a new poll to everyone to determine availability for this date, and then we’ll reassess the situation.

Rehearsal this Monday

We have our first rehearsal after the break this coming Monday. Even though the Masters concert is postponed, I’m sticking to my original rehearsal plan, which includes everything on the program, except the Carmen Fantasia and Colas Breugnon. We’ll pick up on them with Tom McCauley, our guest conductor, and our soloists, Bill & Chris, on January 12. I will post the rehearsal timeframe in the usual way on the Rehearsal This Week page by tomorrow.

Exciting news and updates

It’s going to be a very exciting spring and summer, including:

• I’ve been approached to be the Clinician for the NYC Department of Education Instrumental Conducting Workshop on January 30. This is important to me as it’s the first time I’ve been invited to be the principal clinician for a conducting symposium.
• John Lynch, who worked with us in a clinic rehearsal on George Washington Bridge several years ago, has invited me to Australia to speak at the University of Sydney Music Conservatorium in March. Fortunately, Masters is underwriting the trip, in exchange for doing some admissions recruiting while I’m there.
• If you haven’t checked out the Northshore Concert Band website lately, please do. We are listed on their concert calendar. I met with Scott Golinken, the current Board President, and Laura Stibich, past President, and several members of the band when I was in Chicago last month for the Midwest Clinic. They are truly excited about us coming in June. We are now at the point where we have our membership commitments complete, and Claudia and I are working now to fill in several spots with subs to complete the ensemble. I wrote a “Save the Date” posting on Facebook and got a huge response, including discussion from some local band conductors who talked about following us out to Evanston! I’ve been working on reviewing the Bernstein and Lauridsen, and learning the Maslanka, so we can start work on that right after our Winter Concert is over. (By the way, the Utah Wind Symphony performed Maslanka’s Give Us This Day at the Midwest. It’s certainly getting a good reception and I believe it’s our perfect closer for the Exchange Concert.)
• Mallory Thompson is coming again for my MEBCI Wind Conducting Symposium on May 30-31. Registration will go live on January 9 for those of you who would like to play in the wind ensemble or participate as an Auditor or Conductor (which I heartily recommend!).
• Paul Rosenblum at Caramoor and I spoke prior to Christmas about our program on July 4. Most of the program is nailed down and includes works from this current season, a couple from previous seasons, and suggestions for the vocal numbers with Ryan Silverman, who will be returning to sing with us. I made it clear that we want to move on these arrangements much, much sooner than last year, and Paul is willing to work with me on that. Matt Podd will be writing these arrangements once again, so we will be adding three more wonderful numbers to our library.
• Emily Threinen has invited me to join her and Bob Reynolds as a clinician at her Temple University Wind Conducting and Teaching Workshop, July 6-10. There are conducting and observing tracks available, and I hope some of you may be interested in attending.

So as you can see, there’s a lot going on. I’m so proud of this ensemble and I am thrilled to be looking forward to your performances in the coming months.

See you Monday at the Music Hall!