Category: The Band Director

Pre-school wrap up

Oh my goodness, what a helluva week we had. When I started this week, the Stony Point Band had had two very productive weeks of Summer Band already. In week 1, we focused on marching and playing fundamentals as well as learning the wonderful music of our opener and in week 2, we applied the marching fundamentals to learning the opener of our wonderful drill. This week (3), we put music to our drill and performed it on Friday night at Dragon Stadium (I guess since we only play 2 games there, I’m not gonna call it Tiger/Dragon Stadium anymore. We’re in The Tiger Palace, baby!). My reaction to our performance? Awesome. For only having had a week of learning and a little cleaning, pretty darn good, I must say. I did video tape it but I haven’t had a chance to even get the camera out the bag…much less get it on the computer or online. I’ll get it done today, hopefully.

This week, we also had staff development as well. The speaker we had on Monday, Mychal Winn or something, was, well, alright – if you like being yelled at for motivation. What I learned from him? If you tell the students you teach that they’re going to college, they WILL!!! So all this week, I’ve been telling them that they’re “GOING TO COLLEGE!!!”. Let’s see how well that works. The rest of the week of staff development stuff hasn’t been too bad. Our principals seem to be quite efficient with their presentations (maybe someone practiced what they were gonna say) and we actually got done with many of the presentations several HOURS early! Woo hoo!!! And I got a few things done in my office this week, too. Quite exciting stuff.

Saturday was our annual Car Wash Extravaganza. My team and I were at the Firestone on Old Settlers and we washed a surprising 113 cars. There was never a moment we weren’t washing a car in the 4 hours we were there. When we were done, we even turned away 2 cars because we had to close at noon. Well, there were about 5 cars in line at noon so we went ahead and washed them – they were in line already! Thanks to some of my friends and Facebook fans (fans – LOL) who came out to get their cars washed. With the 8 sites we had going between the band and orchestra, I’m sure we washed over 600 cars. I mean, we made it rain for a few minutes, even! Unfortunately, we made it put more lightening in the sky than rain from it so we had to cancel our End of Summer Pool Party Saturday night. I stayed home and relaxed from an exhausting week so not all was lost.

Today is chore day. I’ve got a load of laundry in the wash, several more ready to go and the dishwasher is as filled as I can get it right now. I’m going to do some vaccuuming and hopefully, get the kitchen floor cleaned up a bit. Has anyone tried one of those Shark Steam Mops? I really think that might help get the grime out of my floor that I can’t seem to get up with anything else. But I’m not really willing to drop the cash on one (even with one of the many Bed Bath & Beyond coupons I have) unless I know it’s really gonna do the job.

School starts on Tuesday so my schedule should actually get a little easier starting this week. I’m convinced that UIL enforces the 8 hour rule more for the adults than the kids. I can only do so much! Okay, back to cleaning this joint!

Love you, mean it!
~C

And so we start again…

It seems as though there are more people out there reading my blog than I realized. I was told last week that I need to blog more because they enjoy reading my blogs. Thanks so much…now leave a comment so I get MY immediate gratification! LOL

First, I’d like to start by welcoming my friend Daniel Montoya, Jr. back to Austin! He’s been doing the grad school thing for two years and I thought it was feel like FOREVER for him to get back. And in some aspects it does and I guess since we chat via conventions and Facebook, it doesn’t. Either way, welcome back to the great ATX, DMJ! ~CB700

Speaking of conventions, I just got back from TBA. I was concerned before hand that I wasn’t going to get a lot out of it because there were so very few clinics that seemed at all appealing. Turned out, I went to more clinics at this year’s TBA than I had in the last few TMEAs or TBAs! The Michael Haithcock series as well as the “Big Ten Has Beens” series were very informative. TJEA had a good turn out at our meeting and lots of exciting things were announced. Don’t worry, once I get the minutes back from Brent, the secretary, and the guys at TMEA help get the new website finished and live, I’ll post them to the new TJEA website. I also got to hang out with friends I don’t normally get to hang out with…as well as meet new friends. Jose (trumpet) and Chris (horn) from the Boston Brass were a complete HOOT to hang with! It was fun being Jose’s tour manager for about 15 minutes. That’s about all I could put up with before I “fired” him from my services. Hah Hah!

Being back from TBA means band stuff starts up again. We’ve had our Band Leadership Camp the last few days and full band camp starts on Monday. We have 3 weeks then school starts up. I can’t believe it’s already time. Where did the summer go? Oh yeah – band stuff all through June! Oh well. Nature of this lifestyle (it’s not just a job, ya know?).

I am glad to say that I’ve been keeping up with my swimming and hitting the gym as often as I can. I think it’ll be hard to get work out time at the gym in in August but I mainly joined to swim so that’s okay. As long as I can get in the water, I’m good.

Well, that’s it for now. I’ll add a few pictures once I get home and can get them from my camera onto “the internet”. I’ve been doing a lot of playing on Facebook this summer but I think now that school is starting back up and there’s no access from campus, I’ll be blogging again more. I have picked up using Twitter a little but mostly, I Twitter for the band. I hope all everyone has a nice rest of the weekend and a great next week.

Love you, mean it!
~C

IF A GREAT MUSICIAN PLAYS GREAT MUSIC BUT NO ONE HEARS…WAS HE REALLY ANY GOOD?

For a couple of years in college (yes, I wrote years), I was a psychology major. This is the type of experiment that interested me. Unfortunately, the psych department at SWT wasn’t quite what I was looking for so I changed majors (again). Anywho, this article about Joshua Bell playing as a street performer in L’Enfant Plaza in Washington DC is very interesting.

The experiment was sponsored by The Washington Post and was to see if classical music played by a professional violinist outside of a music hall would be as appreciated as if you were to pay $100 a ticket for the same (or less, even) performance. You never know what kind of beauty you pass in your daily lives. Take a moment and look (or listen)!

Thanks to Connie and her brother Ski for the article!

Midwest, hats and ovens

Midwest

Midwest & Chicago was a lot of fun. I didn’t venture too far away from the Hilton area but I met a lot of nifty new people, as well as got a chance to hang out with folks I already knew. It was great to have dinner with BOTH Montoya brothers at once. We went to Eleven City Diner and had yummy open faced sandwiches. There was more food on each plate than any of us could have handled. Why didn’t we split plates, guys?

I know you’ve read about the trials and tribulations of my getting to Chicago but I wanted to show you a picture of why I had so many troubles. Seems like the snow on Tuesday (when I originally wanted to fly out) never stopped. When we landed early Wednesday afternoon, I could definitely see why they closed O’Hare Tuesday night. A lot had been cleared at that point (I’m sure thanks to de-icing planes all morning) but that one point that had been driving through is still thick with snow.

I went to a few clinics and concerts but I must say that my two favorite concerts were Betty Pierce and the Grisham Middle School Band from my very own Round Rock ISD and the Ensemble Liberte Wind Orchestra from Kawaguchi-City, Japan. I actually did a lot more walking the floor and talking to people than I did going to clinics this year. Networking is a huge portion of conventioning.


Travis Ancelet and Damon Talley enjoyed the concert as well!

Speaking of networking, I was very excited to see all the folks who were at the Jazz Education Network open forum. I’m really glad that this is going to be about jazz and education and about all the members instead of being about the big names, as the previous organization became by the time I joined. I’m excited that I’m a charter (and the first “regular”) member. They asked me to be the forums moderator so if you’re a member, check out the forums and say hi!

I got to meet Ronald Carter while walking the exhibit halls. Paper is heavy and his new book is HUGE so I didn’t get to add his autograph to it (my buddy Ron McCurdy’s a co-writer and already signed it) but we did take a picture together. I think I’m going to ask TMEA to invite him to be an All State Clinician sometime.

Martin is the Director of the Plymouth-Canton Educational Park Band in Michigan and their “regular” tour company gave him tickets to see the Blue Man Group one night and he invited me to come along. It was a great show and after, we went to the top of the John Hancock Center for a reception. Catching up with old friends is always great. Especially when you have an amazing view of Chicago! 😉

The rest of Midwest was a lot of fun. Like I said, I got to catch up with a lot of people and meet new ones. I talked at length with Frank Ticheli (composer) and Col. Alan Bonner (Executive Director for Kappa Kappa Psi/Tau Beta Sigma) and met composers Michael Daughtery and Eric Whitacre. Of course, I had a chance to hang out with Steve Bryant (congrats on the 2nd Revelli Award!!), John Mackey and Jonathan Newman. Always a great time at the Hilton.

Getting home wasn’t the easiest but it was smoother than getting out there. I had a nice time waiting and waiting at O’Hare with JD Janda, Kerry Taylor and his wife Valerie, Jack Green, Paul Crockett and DJ Jennison. Hanging out with these guys made the wait not seem so long!

Hat Parade
Both needing to do some last minute Christmas shopping this week, my friend Crystal and I ventured out to the craziness that is retail shops a few days before Christmas. When Crystal and I shop, there’s no stress because we can always make anything we do full of laughs and fun things. And my always having my camera with me captures the fun for a lifetime (gosh, don’t I sound like a commercials here!). Regardless of what we’re shopping for, we always keep our eyes open for cute shoes and while stopping at Marshalls, we found some hats we wanted to try on. Hence, our HAT PARADE!!

Gold and sparkly. I think there are Christmas ornaments or something on this hat!

Purple…just like the purse Crystal REALLY REALLY wants.

I do like how this hat fits but it’s wicker and that doesn’t work in the winter.

Gold and sparkly on Crystal. And here, you see the other side of the hat better, too. 😉

I was actually going to get this hat but it was over $10 and would have matched my sweater. We were looking for a bit more outrageous than matching.

Plaid is fun.

This hat just makes us sad.

So, there you go. We finally picked these two hats to buy and wear the rest of the day. Fun hats make Christmas crazy not so…crazy! Yes, we wore them to dinner, even. 😀

Oven
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know I love to cook. I’m not much for baking but I LOVE cooking things. My oven went out last September or so and I’ve been going nuts. I even took all my supplies and made my lasagna at Keith & Jones’s house about a month ago just so I could make something in the oven. They certainly enjoyed the fruits of my labor but I really miss having my oven working. You must be asking, “Why didn’t you just get the thing fixed?”. Well, I get this really nifty (not) trait from my dad called “gotta fix it yourself if at all possible” and with him being an electrical engineer, we usually can for very little money. Thanks to a very long and busy marching season (Go Tigers!), time for that hasn’t been available. Finally, about a month ago, I did a bit of research on “the internet” and found that it might be so difficult to do the repair ourselves and dad came over to take a look. After taking things apart, we still weren’t sure and had ran out of time so we decided to hold off until more research and time could be found. So, yesterday, we narrowed it down to one part…that we couldn’t get disconnected! We were quite frustrated and I decided that I was going to break down and call an appliance repair place. Appliance Connection from here in Pflugerville came today, diagnosed the same part that I had as broken and replaced it in a matter of minutes…and $200. Oh well, I can use the oven now!

So, this turned out to be quite a long post but I hope you enjoyed it. I thought maybe people had stopped reading my blog and I was going to stop blogging but it seems as though you haven’t so I won’t. Have a Merry Christmas, everyone! Cookies will be ready after I eat my frozen pizza….. 😉

Area results

Well, the competitive marching season is over for the SPHS Tiger Band. Out of the 32 bands in the Area D Contest on Saturday, we came in 20th. Not too bad for a little band from the East Side. LOL One marching judge did have us ranked 13th – which is completely a highlight seeing as the marching fundamentals program were developed by yours truly. 😀 Yes, it would have been A.MAZ.ING to see this band go to State but by the first tempo change, I knew that finals wasn’t even in the picture. Even the kids admit that we marched a cleaner show at Region.

But you know, I’m excited about what we’ve accomplished this year. My first priority for these kids is a musical education. Many of them LOVE this music (from the Firebird ballet by Stravinsky), they’re now challenging each other for higher seats, they’re much better behaved in rehearsals, they’re more committed to the program than I’ve EVER seen, etc. etc. etc.. I think our jobs as educators is secure. We’re teaching these kids. I am a firm believer that a good teacher is one that leads their students to not needing them anymore at some point. To become independent thinkers and doers. I say we’re on our way. 🙂

OH, thanks to everyone who came out – Keith, Trish, Her-shui, Josh, mom. Thanks to DMJ for the shout out text that I got as we were on the bus on the way there. Your support of what I do means a lot.
Love you, mean it!
~C