Week of September 14
A Great Start!
It’s been so wonderful having our students back in the building and making music with them!
We’ve begun looking at concert music and the students have done a nice job getting back into the swing of playing their instruments as a group. The bands are all sounding great for the beginning of the year and we’re excited to see how the year plays out!
Performance Recording Sessions
Because the district isn’t allowing in-person performances with audiences currently, we have begun preparing for a socially-distanced recording session for each band in mid-October. We will be recording each band with high-quality audio and video to share with students, families, and the community.
We have tentatively planned for two days after school from 4-6pm at the Leach downtown for each band. We will only use one day, but we’ve set aside two in case of inclement (or cold) weather.
Students and parents, Please keep both dates for your band(s) below open until 6pm. At this point, we would like to shoot for using the first date only, but the weather and how things come together in this new situation may require us to use the second date.
Tentative Dates
Wind Ensemble: October 12 or 19
Varsity Band: October 13 or 20
Concert Band: October 14 or 21
Wildcat Band: October 15 or 22
Depending on how the rest of the year plays out, we have three other similar sessions planned. We hope to have concerts later in the year!
Calendar Updates
Now that we have a little more information about the beginning of the year, we have updated our performance calendar. It can be found on digitally (Google) here or in PDF form here.
A few highlights are below:
As football has been moved between the winter and spring seasons, we will not be performing as a pep band this fall. Depending on dates and weather, we may try to play at football games in the spring.
We hope to play for basketball games this winter, but updated game dates haven’t been released and we don’t know what will be allowed in terms of spectators. We will share our plan as soon as we get more information.
We’ve left the spring semester schedule intact at this point. We hope that works out!
Uniform fittings planned for September have been cancelled. We will plan dates in the future when we’re allowed to have in-person concerts later in the year.
Spring Break 2020 Trip Update
We are working with administration to see how we are allowed to proceed. In the meantime, please hold off on payments until are have more information to share.
Solo and Ensemble Changes This Year
With the move to hybrid learning, we will not be requiring students to participate in the annual Solo and Ensemble this school year.
For students who would still like to participate, WSMA is offering two virtual sets of district and state festivals with one in the fall and one in the spring. Students, if you would like to participate and one or both of these, please let us know immediately! We can then share the details and get you set up with music.
Thank You!
Thank you for your flexibility! All of us in the music department have years of experience teaching music, but non of us have taught it virtually. We are doing our best to share information with students and families as quickly as we can and we thank you for your continued flexibility!