CONCERTS!

Woohoo! Great performances the past few weeks. I always get nervous when our dress rehearsals go well, because the formula seems to be: Good dress rehearsal = bad evening concert. This year, though that doesn't apply. Both of my schools had good dress rehearsals and performances. At DES, Basses Are Aces featured a strong trombone & bass clarinet, and Sabre Dance turned out to be SO good. At NCES, we were missing a featured sax player (poor girl - she was sick!) so we played something we hadn't played in weeks, Sousa's Stars & Stripes Forever, and the crowd loved it! Both Beginning Bands watch me better than any group I've had, so they were VERY together. I have to figure out how to compress the videos better, then I'll get them posted to TeacherTube.

AND THEN, the jazz bands went to the JSC Middle School Jazz Festival yesterday. It was a great experience for us. Because of absences, I combined the two jazz band, to great effect. We played for two judges, who gave us great comments afterwards. Very good stuff!