The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

WARNING: The following blog contains shameless advertisement for the Mercer Middle-Senior High School Bands! Okay, if you made it to sentence two then you realize there must be an upcoming concert.  The ensembles at Mercer will present their Holiday Concert on Wednesday evening, November 28th at 7:00 p.m.  A synopsis of each group’s program follows….

Mark Camphouse & my re-education as a Band Director

In December of 2003 I sat listening to the PMEA District 5 Honors Band. Esteemed composer Mark Camphouse was the guest conductor. As I sat and listened to “Toccata” by Frescobaldi I was completely entranced. I asked other directors about the piece – and I was dumb-founded by the fact it was such an old piece. I didn’t know it, […]

New Recordings

If you get a chance, please bump over to myspace.com/travisjweller and check out several new recordings that I have posted. I am interested in gaining some feedback on the pieces. “Journey to the Prairie” was recorded by Dr. Edwin P. Arnold and the Grove City College Wind Ensemble. The programmatic piece depicts the Westward Expansion in our country. It is […]

Pirates! at Westminster College

I had a fantastic experience on Friday, October 26th at Westminster College with the Wind Ensemble.  It was an honor to have Pirates! performed by such an outstanding group of young musicians.  It was also very rewarding to hear the seriousness with which they took the privilege of making music.  In their pre-concert meeting in the band room, each of the […]

Not every concert needs to be big!

This is part blog/part advertising so bear with me as I do a little promotion for my students, and offer some ideas to the new community of music educators who are not afraid to talk about ideas and issues that can have tremendous impacts upon our program. Thanks to the support of my administration I was able to institute a […]

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