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….
At the urging of several friends, and a desire to provide some extra help for my students I have completed my first podcast at Wildvoice. The first podcast is a review/remediation session of cut-time and 6/8 rhythms that the middle school band has been working on during rehearsals and that are found in one of their selections for the Holiday Concert. It is simply titled “Mercer MS Band Rhythm Tutoring Session”. Though I consider […]
You are seated in a rehearsal with your students. Suddenly without warning an alto clarinet spontaneously combusts into flames. It spreads quickly to your gradebook, old wool band uniforms, and begins creeping towards the music library. You have but seconds to get you and your students out of the room (okay so there are a few percussionists that you conveniently […]
So this week is a pretty big week. There is no concert. No recital. There is a playoff game which yours truly and his marching band must attend, perform, and cheer – but that is a mere formality (if we don’t know it by now, we never will). The big week actually comes to a head on Tuesday evening as […]
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, […]
