We will continue to target detail work on the Husa on Monday night. In addition, our guest conductor, Keith Hodgson, will be with us this week to conduct the Gates. Here’s the rehearsal plan.

Marianne reached out to several Czech organizations, and received a reply from the Czech Consulate in New York. They’ve posted our concert on their Facebook page. This is great news! Hopefully we’ll hear from more groups that she contacted as we move forward.

Our Master Class with Dan Batchelder is set for Monday, January 15 at 3:00 pm. We’ll discuss this more on Monday night. We’re looking for commitments from those attending to make sure this is worthwhile for Don.

And I have a surprise for everyone at the end of rehearsal Monday to close out the year. See you then!

Rehearsal Monday

And just that quickly, 2017 is almost gone. We have two more rehearsals left, and we need to make the most of both. I appreciate your focused presence during these Husa rehearsals. I recognize it’s tough to concentrate. So thank you once again for taking this on. I’ve detailed the rehearsal plan for Monday, 7:30 pm at TMH.

Trumpet Master Class – January 15

We can now confirm that our February trumpet soloist, Don Batchelder, principal trumpet with the New York City Opera Orchestra, will present a trumpet master class on Monday, January 15 (MLK Day), from 3:00-5:30 pm on the stage at TMH. Trumpet players are encouraged to attend. We need a couple players to play some solo or excerpt rep, so please consider playing! He is also willing to do some sectional work with the entire section on our current repertoire. The class is open to everyone to listen and observe so please consider attending. I will have more details as we move into the New Year.

Related concert updates

• Marge Hone asked me to promote the Irvington Presbyterian Church performance of Handel’s Messiah this coming Sunday at 4:00 pm. Click on the graphic to enlarge for details.
• The Connecticut Symphonic Winds concert originally scheduled for today is CANCELED.
• The Chappaqua Orchestra performance of Brahms Requiem is ON today at 4 pm at Manhattanville College.
• The Masters School Winterlight concert is ON for Sunday at 4:00 pm.

Enjoy the weekend. Relieve some of your holiday stress with some practice.  😀

See you Monday!

I felt very good about last week’s rehearsal! I appreciate that players practiced and brought their best efforts to the tasks at hand. The time until the holiday break will come and go quickly, so it’s really important that we dig in and master the difficult sections in the rep before that break. This will allow us to use the time in January to mold the sound and create an atmosphere conducive for this milestone program.

Monday’s rehearsal starts again at the regular time of 7:30 pm. The plan is posted. The target sections of the Husa are sections of movements I, II, and IV, but take a look at the link for the specific sections we’ll focus on.

See you all Monday.

We’re back to our regular start time of 7:30 pm tomorrow evening. Percussion is meeting at Eastchester High School for a sectional, so no music stands or equipment will be needed for them at TMH.

The rehearsal plan is posted. Over the next several weeks, my plan is to rehearse two of the Husa movements per week, trying to stretch out the grunt work needed without losing track of the groundwork laid out in previous rehearsals, and without over-taxing your chops and emotions. Tom McCauley has agreed to come to our rehearsal on January 22 to clinic the piece, and I’m very excited about this milestone on our way to February 11.

And NASCAR? Chris Carbone found this crossword. See number 32 Across. See you all tomorrow evening.