Wednesday, April 5th, 2006; 4:00 pm
The Stony Point Concert Band’s
FIRST EVER
UIL Concert & Sightreading Contest
Georgetown ISD Performing Arts Center
Georgetown, TX
Send good vibes; come out if you can.
Category: The Band Director
UIL is this week…
Well, UIL week is here. For all you non-band-nerd-folk, UIL Concert & Sightreading Contest is a pretty big deal – bigger than UIL Marching Contest. I have faith that my students will do their absolute best but I’ve got to admit that nerves of very young high school students (some of whom have never experienced anything like this) scares me a little…a bit. I’m trying to stay ahead of the game and trying to keep rehearsals as light as possible but it seems like every rehearsal, they get worse and worse. As though they’ve hit the peak of working this music and now they’re coming down. The brain fart stuff we’re experiencing is stupid stuff or stuff they’ve never messed up on before, too. And that’s not the harder part of the contest.
If you notice in the title of the contest, there’s sightreading included. This means we go into a room with 3 judges and a piece of music none of us have ever seen before. I have 9 minutes to teach it (5 of which I am not allowed to sing or recite anything at all musical) and away we go…play with as few mistakes as possible. During all the teaching time, only I am allowed to talk (which can be a very good thing). They’ve actually been doing okay in class but they tend to miss accidentals and key changes and I’ve been told that we have a key change and lots of accidentals. Hopefully, they’ll have their game on and we’ll be okay…and by okay, I mean not disqualified (not hard in this situation).
I’d love your support on Wednesday. We perform the concert portion at 4:00 in the Klett Performing Arts Center at Georgetown HS. Sightreading happens in the band hall directly after the concert portion. If you can’t make it out, send good vibes and right notes & rhythms our way.
– – – – – – – – – – – – UPDATE – – – – – – – – – – – –
On an upnote (no pun intended…unless you thought it was funny), I just got asked to play in a Student-Teacher Tennis Doubles Tournament later this month. It’s been a while since I’ve picked up a racket so we’ll see how that goes. Luckily, my schedule opens up quite a bit next week so I can go out there and do some practicing! YAY, a fun workout!!!
And the search officially continues….
I got estimates back on potential foundation work and one from a general contractor on the house I was looking at. With these two items combined (not to mention the unknown after the foundation work is done), I’ve decided to terminate my offer and keep on lookin’. I was kicking around maybe seeing if the current owner would pay for the foundation repair (and have it done by closing) and also pay for part of my closing as credit towards the other repairs necessary to the house but being that all that would end up costing close to (or over, depending on what other repairs the foundation would cause) $20,000. Yup, that’s 4 zeros you see there. Not worth it, seeing as we negotiated the selling price at $126,200. The search continues but not until after contest & the trip next week.
I’m so stessed out right now, I don’t know what to do. Knowing now what I do and terminating the offer on this house has certainly taking some of it off my shoulders but my rehearsals are getting more and more stressful and the students are becoming less and less cooperative daily. Maybe they don’t want the same things as I do. If they don’t want to take every opportunity to be successful at any level, maybe I don’t want to work with them. I know, it sounds harsh but I bust my butt doing all I do to help the program grow. It has grown and it is getting better but everytime we think it’s ready to go the next step, we just hit the tallest, thickest brick wall. Sounds like my past relationships…maybe it’s a sign! No house, no relationship, nothing but beating my head on a wall at work…grad school, here I come!!! No, I am going to wait at least 3 more years before that decision happens.
Well, another long day awaits me tomorrow so I’m off to bed.
Argh…
It’s Friday and I’m so tired that I can’t focus on anything! I’m really proud of my band right now, though. Even though I wasn’t the nicest to them today during rehearsal (however, I have been much worse), they really are working very hard and they’ve come a long way. I just want them to put in that little bit extra to push them over into the “No problem, they’ll feel successful coming off the contest stage” category. Sometimes, wanting someone else to do so well really sucks!
Benford's Musings 
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