Wednesday, June 23, 2010

A sad goodbye, upcoming concert


1.  Alex Harline stopped by last week to let us know he and his family are moving to Texas.  We'd like to thank his dad, Hugh, for all the hard work he's done in photographing the group and his wonderful talent for getting us to pose for some great pictures.  For many samples of his fabulous work, check out our website www.southbaybones.org and the wonderful cover he did for our promotional CD.  And our appreciation for Alex's musicianship, this is a fine player who has truly grown with the group musically.  Best of luck and many thanks to the Harline family, please come back and visit us (and Alex, be sure to sit in).

2.  Even though we're pretty familiar with our program for the July 30 (and possible antiphonal) concert, we now have an opportunity to polish our performance by working on the small nuances that make for a great performance.  The only way to do this is by attending rehearsals as much as possible between now and the end of July.  Many of us are beginning to appreciate the wonderful charts we are playing as we approach the marked tempos of the music (click on and listen to our arrangement of the Hungarian
Dance, we're almost there: http://www.hickeys.com/cgi/search.cgi - but we may not go quite that fast).

3.  We are seeing more players attending rehearsal as their schedules free up for the summer.  Come help them get familiar with the music (and if you haven't attended rehearsals for awhile, now's the time).

4.  Those of you who borrowed copies from the books for the baseball game concert, please return them as soon as possible.
 
See you Thursday!




--
~Christine
http://christinescontemplations.blogspot.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/biochemtine/

http://captured-by-christine.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

This week's rehearsal, lots more


1.  Our formal concert date will be July 30 at 8 p.m.
2.  If we have enough players we'll pursue an antiphonal performance at a downtown San Jose cathedral-like venue within a week or so of the concert date.
3.  Julie Bounds, the President of the Santa Clara County High School Band Director's Association, sent out a wonderful posting to the band directors (over 45) about our group.  We may be seeing a good turnout this week and/or the following.
4.  This week's rehearsal will focus on the antiphonal music, the Bach Fugue in C, and a Night in Tunisia.  We may run through some we did last week if we have a good turnout of new players.
5.  The group voted to make a couple of performance rules due to previous problems:
     - All performers need to attend at least 4 rehearsals before a performance (not necessarily consecutively) and show a familiarity with the music.
     - If a player wishes to perform but cannot meet the above criteria before a performance they may request that they "audition" with the group with the group determining if the sound of the group as a whole is ready.  In other words, if a performer cannot make rehearsals on a regular basis the performer may ask the group if the group feels they are ready.
6.  Our director, Vernon Miyata, found this wonderful website.  Lots of useful information and history:
 
See you Thursday!

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Concert date

1.  Thanks to everyone who participated in the Giants game yesterday.  Great job!

2.  We have a choice of 2 dates for our summer concert at the Santa Clara High School Performing Arts Center.  Please let us know as soon as possible (hopefully by this Thursday) if you can not make either Friday July 30th or Friday August 6.    We will schedule the performance on the date we have the most available performers.  As in the past the concert should start around 8 p.m.  We'll also try to schedule a performance around the date for a possible antiphonal concert downtown.

3.  The high school band director letters go out tomorrow, Tuesday, June 1, and we'll be having some of our college students joining us soon, so our numbers should be growing over the next couple of weeks.

4.  If we have at least 8 players by 7:30 p.m. on Thursday we'll practice the antiphonal pieces. 
 
See you Thursday!