First, I want to pass on an apology from Marge Hone. She and I worked together this week to mail-merge our spreadsheet of Chicago air/hotel data into separate statements to send to everyone participating, but somehow she emailed all of the pages to the first several woodwind players. Mea culpa for Marge! Please report any errors you may find on your statement to her immediately. In order to keep our payment schedule with the travel agent we need to ask for at least one-half of your current balance to be paid by this coming Sunday, January 25 (delayed from the original published date of January 9). You can pay the whole balance if you wish, but we need to ask for at least half at this point.

Our performance week is here! Admittedly it feels early this year, because it is early. We hoped to snag the Sunday after the Super Bowl again, but that wasn’t possible. Hopefully it will be so in 2016.

I’ve posted the rehearsal plans for both the Monday rehearsal and Wednesday dress rehearsals. Please check the plans and practice accordingly. This is a barn-burner concert (because it’s so cold, you know) so gear up to play a lot of notes this week.

See you Monday.

The rehearsal plan is ready to go for Monday. We have the soloists and Tom McCauley coming in tomorrow evening. I will also play “catch up” with the Bernstein movements I couldn’t get to last week.

Rachel will have tickets to distribute tomorrow night. Please remember to push selling tickets beyond your two comps — this concert is always a tough sell. Let’s pack TMH!

Last week Ben Acrish shared this article from School Band & Orchestra magazine, which features 50 music educators from the 50 states. Our guest conductor from Fall 2013, Rich Guillen, is the featured director from New York! Thanks to Ben for noticing and sharing this. Click the photo to see a PDF of the entire article.

I am very happy to announce that Mislav Forrester, trumpet, who auditioned for us last week, is joining us as a permanent member. He’ll be playing the January 25 concert and also traveling with us to Chicago. Please help us welcome him. We are working on filling in our ranks with subs for those who have conflicts with the Chicago trip and these plans are falling together nicely. We’ll announce the final trip roster when the last subs submit their written confirmations.

Be careful driving in the morning. Fortunately, the bad weather should be contained to the morning and we should be good for tomorrow evening.

I just opened up Facebook and saw this notification:

When I opened the post, I couldn’t believe my eyes:

Caramoor mentioned us in the their first promotion of the 2015 season! Only two artists are mentioned — the St. Luke’s Orchestra and us! This is amazing!!!

If you have a Facebook account, visit the Caramoor page and like this post as soon as you can!

Congratulations on this milestone!

As promised, the flyers for the upcoming concert are ready. Click here to go to the resources page. The lo-res and hi-res versions are right at the top. Print, distribute, email, post! This is always a tough concert to sell because it’s winter, and fewer people venture out. Don’t be satisfied with your 2 comps. Get out there and sell tickets — let’s pack the house!

Thanks for a real workout rehearsal last night. Remember that our soloists and guest conductor will be coming next Monday.

Now put down the laptop or tablet and go practice!