Our first rehearsal is less than two weeks away, on Monday, September 12, at 7:30 pm at TMH. This post includes important information regarding:

• Auditions for new members
• Rehearsals
• Repertoire for the new season
• Invitation to perform for NYSBDA Symposium

Auditions

David Church, our new Personnel Manager, has been working diligently over the summer to help me prepare for our new member auditions on September 6. At at this time, I would welcome any additional qualified Bb clarinet candidates that you might recommend. (Matt Kowalski has decided not to return this season, and so we have two clarinet spots we’re trying to fill.) If you have a clarinetist to recommend, please send me their contact information and I will pass it on to David.

Rehearsals

In September, we are rehearsing on Mondays on September 12, 19, and 26.

There are several Monday holidays in October. The Board is working to resolve the rehearsal which falls on the second night of Rosh Hashanah, October 3. We will rehearse on Columbus Day, October 10. The Board is also working to resolve the issue of Halloween, October 31. And we must find an alternate site for Monday, October 17, which is not available at TMH. We will alert you as these matters are resolved.

Our Fall dress rehearsal is Saturday, November 5, 10:00 am to 1:00 pm, and the concert is Sunday, November 6, 1:00 pm sound check, 3:00 performance.

Repertoire

I’m very excited about our 29th Season repertoire. You can find the entire program listing here. Our annual brochure is at the printer, and we will be mailing these out next week. If you have names/addresses you’d like to add to our hard-copy brochure mailing list, please send them to me by September 6. 

Our Fall program, “Impressions and Memories,” will feature the new Paul Lavender arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Yes, all 15 movements will constitute the entire second half of the program. This is a unique opportunity to play a superior new arrangement of this monumental work. (I have been careful with the programming of the first half of the concert to balance the overall program.)

As many of you know, Mussorgsky wrote this suite originally for piano in 1874. Ravel orchestrated the work in 1922. Paul Lavender created this new transcription of Ravel’s orchestration in 2012, which was premiered by the US Marine Band, “The President’s Own,” at the Texas Bandmasters Association Convention.

In order to truly understand the work, we all need to experience the development of each movement from its original piano version to the Ravel orchestration to the Lavender transcription. I have created a page with a play list which lines all these up, movement by movement. This is not something you’ll want to listen to in one sitting, but I urge everyone to listen to these comparative recordings. It will help so much with your understanding of the development of this transcription!

NYSBDA Symposium Performance

The New York State Band Directors Association sponsors an annual March symposium with clinics, a keynote address, student honor bands, and guest ensembles. The Saturday night anchor concert is always a guest ensemble of high reputation, and recently has included the Ithaca College Wind Ensemble, the Ithaca College Concert Band, and the Crane School of Music Wind Ensemble. And we have been invited to perform in 2017!

The proposed one hour concert would be performed on Saturday, March 4 at 8:00 pm at the Liverpool Holiday Inn Convention Center in Liverpool, NY (next to Syracuse). We would have a sound check at 6:00 pm. I would draw the program from works on the January 29 and May 20 programs.

The Board considered the invitation and voted to pass this on to the membership for consideration. We will discuss this in detail at our first rehearsal on September 12, and we will need to poll the group for a final decision and respond soon thereafter. Although the invitation is pending, another ensemble may be considered if we do not respond in a timely manner.

If you have specific questions which may affect your decision to participate in this proposed NYSBDA performance, please send them to me, and I’ll try to answer them in my next post.

Have a great week, and a great Labor Day holiday! I’m eager to see you all on September 12 and get to work!

This mid-July post includes a lot of news, announcing changes, concert dates, and calls to action, including:

• A heart-felt good-bye
• Link to The Palace photos
• Season philosophy description/philosophy
• Concert commitment form (very important!)
• Call for military bands support
• Temple University conducting workshop

So find a comfy seat, pour a glass of wine, and read on!

Wishing the best to Claudia

Last week, Claudia made a very difficult phone call, when she called me to say that the timeline for selling their home, following her husband’s retirement, had sped ahead far ahead of expectations. Working closely with Claudia over the past 8 years, I relied on her for so very, very much in her role as Personnel Manager. Her musicianship and expertise will be missed in our clarinet section, but her track record with personnel has set a high bar for her successor. Claudia wrote this message and asked me to share it with you:

Dear WSW Friends,

It is with very mixed emotions that I announce to all of you that I will not be returning to WSW in the fall. Last week, I tendered my resignation to Curt, Jim, and the Board, citing the fact that my husband, who is finally retiring, and I, will be relocating to Colorado to be closer to our family/grandchildren. This move has come about much sooner than we ever anticipated due to the very unexpected quick sale of our home in Bethel, CT. With the down market in the area, we had figured to be here another 6-9 months at the very least.

Sixteen years ago, my husband, a biochemist, was transferred in his job from Elkhart, Indiana, to Tarrytown. This was not a move that I initially embraced as I was very comfortable in my rewarding private teaching and playing career in “The Band Instrument Capital of the World.” Factor in that we knew no one here in the northeast, and that all of our family were elsewhere. It was a rough transition for me, but I eventually found HVWS and Rob LaPorta on the internet, and as they say, the rest is history. WSW has now been a huge part of my life for over twelve years — twelve years of unparalleled musical experiences, memories, and friendships that I would never have known otherwise. I know the group will continue to thrive under the incredible leadership of Curt and the Board; it has been real pleasure serving with them and, of course, with you. To say that I will miss each and every one of you would be a vast understatement. Indeed, you became the family that I did not have here.

All of this being said, we are ready for the next step in life’s journey. Ken and I have worked hard and are now really looking forward to being with our children and grandchildren. I am not exactly sure of our timeline — there are still details to work out — but it is looking like we will be leaving mid- to late-September. There is the possibility that I may still see you before that time, but in the event that I don’t, I want to wish you all the very best for the future, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the wonderful memories and friendship we have shared. 

Take care, and please keep in touch — you all know my email and phone.

Claudia/Clarinetta

Knowing that this is a critical transitional time in our annual calendar, we acted quickly to find and name her replacement. Thanks to the suggestions and assistance of both Claudia and Jim, I am very pleased to welcome David Church, who has been approved by the Board as our next Personnel Manager. David will be assuming Claudia’s duties immediately, and will be working with me through the rest of the summer to prepare next year’s roster and set up our September auditions.

Palace photos

Katie Settel, who took photos at The Palace on June 19, has made those photos available to the Board for our use on the website and in publicity materials. All the photos are also available to you for purchase, at a 20% discount.

Click here to go to Katie’s photo site. If you would like to purchase hard copies, select the photos you’d like, go to the Shopping Cart, and type in 8NQGP in the “Apply a Coupon” field for the discount. But hurry, these photos will only be available for purchase until July 27!

The 29th Season

I want to take a minute to describe my philosophy for the 2016-2017 season, both to exhilarate you and also to allay your fears. The past two seasons have truly been “ramped up” in order to focus our skills and performance values forward to the two June Exchange Concerts, and the difficulty and challenges of the repertoire have been aligned accordingly. My goal this year is to continue to challenge you, but not to overwhelm you. There is no goal here to take a season filled with 3 subscription concerts plus a benefit concert plus hosting the Exchange Concert plus Caramoor, and somehow find a way to pile on more. Instead, I want to plan repertoire that will challenge you, excite you and our audiences, continue to build our individual and ensemble skills, but keep it in line with our mission statement and goals. We still have much work to do — and our next anniversary season is only a year away — and so I will be planning this season carefully as a follow-through to the past and a springboard to the future.

Concert Commitment Form

It’s time to ask you all to commit to this season’s dress rehearsal and concert dates. These dates were announced and have also been posted on this site’s home page. Paul Rosenblum has officially invited us back to Caramoor on July 1, 2017, so that concert is once again in ink.

Please click here to go to the Google Form, and complete this information by next Wednesday, July 27, so we have an accounting our personnel situation before our Board meeting on July 28. It is best (and easiest) to complete this with a desktop computer, rather than your phone or tablet. And you want to have your calendar with you to confirm your availability and write in our dates. Again, please complete this form by next Wednesday, July 27. Otherwise, David will be contacting you, in his first act as Personnel Manager! 

Looking ahead to September, we plan to hold the first rehearsal on Monday, September 12 at TMH.

Call to support Military Bands

You may have read that there is a proposed amendment to the Department of Defense budget which will eliminate off-site performances for all US military bands. Our friends and colleagues in these ensembles need our support. Here are two sites for more information, and links to sign a petition and write to your senators.

• From the Midwest Clinic Board of Directors
• “We the People” petition

Our friends and neighbors responded to our recent GoFundMe.com campaign. I hope you’ll take 5 minutes to respond to this no-cost call to action to help us save this important national musical resource.

Temple Conducting Workshop

I had an amazing week in Philadelphia working side by side with Emily Threinen and Kevin Sedatole at Emily’s final event at Temple University. She has already moved to Minneapolis with her husband and 8-month old daughter, and is looking forward to this next stage of her career. She asked me specifically to convey her best wishes to you all.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be announcing the new season’s rep, along with guest conductors, guest soloists, and apprentice conductors in a few weeks.

Enjoy the beautiful summer weather, and we’ll look for your concert commitment form reply by next Wednesday.

Inertia is an amazing property of physics, and it certainly was in effect last night. From the first sounds of The Star Spangled Banner, I knew “we had them” and that the audience was with us 100% for the rest of the program. But it was the forward energy you created during the performance that was truly amazing. At one point, I had this physical memory of thinking, “This sits squarely on some of the best work this group has ever done!” It was reported that Paul Rosenblum said, “We have to invite you back — you’re a tradition!” The Caramoor audience is refined, sophisticated, enlightened, and (it would appear) totally in love with WSW! I’m not only proud of your performance focus and your ability to (once again) peak at the optimum performance moment, but also so very, very proud of how the audience, the CEO, the collaborating artists, and the crews all respond so positively to you as people. Connecting through music in this way is what the American community band movement is all about, and you certainly fulfilled that goal last night.

No moss grows under my feet — I passed through TSA Pre-check at JFK at 6:06 am this morning for my flight out to San Francisco to attend John Lynch’s wedding. I’m staying in California after the wedding to feed my compulsion for roller coasters at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Los Angeles, and then I’m off to Temple University on July 11 to teach at Emily Threinen’s conducting workshop (along with Gene Corporon).

I will be finalizing repertoire over the next weeks for our 29th season, and sending out a form for everyone to confirm commitments for concert and dress rehearsal dates next season. I have all the guest and apprentice conductors finalized, and just one more soloist to confirm for the Fall concert. There will be no Exchange concert next year, but I hope that we’ll have a confirmation for Caramoor before too long. Looking ahead, 2017-2018 will be our 30th anniversary year, and my 10th anniversary as conductor. I’ve already planned a key work for that year, Karel Husa’s Music for Prague 1968, as this will be the 50th anniversary of those significant events in Czechoslovakia.

Bask in the glow from last night — you deserve it!