The visitation and memorial service for Janet Duncan was truly beautiful, and the room was full, standing-room only. About a dozen WSW members were in attendance, and it felt good to be a part of the circle of family and friends. I spoke with Janet’s children, Dorothy and James III, and suggested that we perform the Lauridsen O Magnum Mysterium in memory of Janet on May 16. They agreed that this was a fitting tribute. I hope that you’ll agree that this will be a beautiful way to remember Janet.

As promised, I have one more form to ask all the Chicago personnel to complete – and we need it completed by Monday evening. You’ll find it below. This data is very important, because it will pull together the information for purchasing the Chicago Symphony Orchestra tickets, confirm travel/hotel details, and (especially) collect important information for those requesting homestays. If you are traveling with us to Chicago, please complete this form before rehearsal on Monday night. Only one reply is needed from each WSW member traveling. We need to send this data to the Northshore hosts on Tuesday. (If you are not traveling with us, you do not need to complete the form.)

Check out the rehearsal plan for Monday, at TMH. See you then.

This has been a rough week. Janet was not only a loyal member of our ensemble since the year it was founded, she was a symbol of longevity in our group and in the American band movement. She will certainly be missed.

As noted in the obituary that Claudia sent out to everyone, the visitation for Janet is tomorrow, Saturday, from 3:00-5:00 pm at Waterbury and Kelly Funeral Home,1300 Pleasantville Road, in Briarcliff Manor. A memorial service will be held during the visitation at 3:30 pm. I am planning on attending, and I believe several of our Board members will be there as well. You are most welcome to join us.

I will write one more post tomorrow to discuss Monday’s rehearsal. It will include one more important form for the Chicago trip players, designed to collect the last information needed by our NCB hosts. We need to tie up this information by Monday night’s rehearsal.

I’m back, safely, slightly jet-lagged, and eager to see you all tomorrow night. I heard wonderful things about the sectional rehearsals with Matt & Rich and the workshop rehearsal with Tom.

I’ve planned, as best as I can, every rehearsal between now and July 4. Go to Rehearsal This Week to see the full plan. I’ll be fine-tuning each week, of course, until the week before each rehearsal, but at least I have a plan in place to help the various segments of the personnel plan for this array of performances in May, June, and July.

We now have specific questions from Northshore about accommodating the homestay people. I’ll talk more about this Monday night, and we’ll have another form for just the homestay people to complete. They also sent some more information about the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performance.

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. See you tomorrow night.

We just learned from our group travel agent that we need confirmation of several key pieces of information for the group flight and hotel reservation, including your full name as it appears on your photo ID, your date of birth, and gender. We need this information by NOON on TUESDAY, MARCH 31, in order to process this data and return to the travel agent in time, so please reply immediately.

We are sorry to ask for this immediate reply, but the agent never warned us that we needed to collect birth dates for the flights, and now suddenly we need to collect this information and return it to them along with the hotel rooming lists this week. If you are not traveling to Chicago, you do not need to complete this form.

Thanks in advance for your immediate attention to this. I’ll write later in the week about the rehearsal on April 6.