It’s January!

Emerging from the holidays is always tough. There’s usually not much to look forward to but tax season and lent. But January for WSW will be brisk and exciting — we have three rehearsals and BOOM! our Side-by-Side performance with the White Plains HS bands comes up in place of rehearsal on Monday, January 27. Pending the meeting with WPHS band directors Kathy Davis and Bill Tonissen, the program for that performance includes the heavy hitters from this cycle: Glinka, Horne, Ticheli, and Karrick, plus Aldridge and Hall (combined with WPHS bands).

We return to rehearsals this Monday, January 6 at 7:30 pm at TMH. There will be a sax sectional at 6:45 pm prior to rehearsal, site pending Karina’s announcement that the painting project in the Studio is completed and dry; otherwise the sectional will be held at 6:45 pm in the largest dressing room, above the stage door.

Tickets for February 9

The ticket page for our February 9 concert is posted and ready:
https://tickets.tarrytownmusichall.org/eventperformances.asp?evt=2984
The coupon code for the reduced Friends & Family tickets is posted in #genearal_band_chat channel on Slack. I will announce it as well on Monday night.

Commission update

I had a chance for a short visit with Viet Cuong at the Midwest in Chicago in December. Although he wasn’t ready to share many details, Viet is excited about our commission project and he promised that completion is on schedule for February 15. Our first rehearsal of this new work will be on Monday, February 24 (at the first rehearsal after the Winter Concert).

Board meetings

Our next board meetings are scheduled for Tuesday, January 14 and Tuesday, February 11, both at 7:30 pm on Zoom.

Rehearsal Monday at TMH, 7:30-9:45 pm

Our final rehearsal before the holiday break is this Monday at TMH, at the regular time. The rehearsal plan is posted.

Slack – one more invitation

We are hoping to use Slack to distribute the Band Camp codes for downloading current and past WSW performance recordings, so please consider joining! We really had an uptick in the number of members joining the WSW Members Slack Workspace this past week. If you haven’t joined yet, do consider it. Just click here.

Holiday wishes

I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone the very best for this holiday season, and all good health and happiness in 2025. I am so grateful for you, the players of WSW, and look forward to our continuing collaborations together!

Rehearsal Monday at TMH

With two rehearsals remaining before the holiday break, we are back in the Music Hall on Monday for a full rehearsal, 7:30-9:45 pm. We’ll make good use of the progress made in sectionals last week to pull much of those works together one last time in 2024. As always, the rehearsal schedule is posted here.

While you’re on the home page, please take a look at all the other links and info available through this site. Many questions that you might want to ask can be answered by looking through the home page or through the menus at the top of the page.

Slack

We really had an uptick in the number of members joining the WSW Members Slack Workspace this past week. If you haven’t joined yet, do consider it. Just click here. We are hoping to use Slack to distribute the Band Camp codes for downloading current and past WSW performance recordings, so please consider joining!

Performance opportunity

Priscilla Goldfarb (management@musicatstmarys.org), chair of the Music at St. Mary’s in Cold Spring (no religious affiliation with the church), is looking for small chamber ensembles to perform in their performing arts series in 2025. This might be a nice opportunity for one or more of our section ensembles to perform in an appreciative, low impact atmosphere — possibly the flute quartet, sax quartet, Bear Mountain Brass, or other section/group. Contact Priscilla directly at the email listed above.

Jazz in Vermont

I had a great time working with vocalist Carmen Bradford last night with the VT Jazz Center Big Band. You should be able to view the video for the rest of this week here.
The music starts around 11:00. The 2nd set begins around 1:22:00.
Donations to support the VJC Scholarship Fund would be appreciated.
I hope you enjoy the music.
Rob

Caramoor 2025

Our rep for July 4 at Caramoor is now set. I’m happy to announce that Mimi Hilaire, who is singing with us on February 9, will be reprising those three vocal numbers at Caramoor this summer. I know the audience will love her!

The program includes three Sousa marches and The Cowboys, by John Williams. I’ve been waiting several years to program this, and I think this is the right year to do it. Check out the entire program here.

UGH!!! I sent the wrong Slack link! Thank you to Jessica for catching this.

To join the Members Slack workspace (not the Board’s workspace), please contact Curt.

Apologies! Please take advantage of this if you have not done so!

And see you Monday!