I thank each of you for your excellent progress and work towards the performance last week!  I can hardly believe it has been a week since the last concert.  I have received many fantastic comments from people in the audience about how well you played with the soloists, how you opened with the energy of the Star Wars suite, and how well the Mozart and Holst sounded.  I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

Now, I’m already working hard preparing for the next concert. 

I’ve received a couple questions from students and coaches about what we will be doing in the next few weeks. 

The Plan for the Next Few Weeks

November 30 – December 14, we will do some sight-reading and also read through the Composition Competition submissions.  I’m impressed by the quality of the pieces we will try.  All who are available should be at these rehearsals.  Also, we’re working (through the music selections committee) on selecting the materials and pieces that will complement the potential Composition Competition winner and a piece called “Orkney Wedding with Sunrise,” a piece by Peter Maxwell Davies, a contemporary British composer that depicts a scene after a wedding held on the islands of Northern Scotland.  Oh, and it will feature that quintessential orchestral instrument, the bagpipe.

Bloomington Area Arts Council Fund Raiser

The Bloomington Area Arts Council, which rents office space for our operations, will host a fundraiser dinner and split the proceeds between the BAAC and MAYO.  We will provide entertainment for the evening.  For more information, check out http://www.bloomingtonarts.info/Public/Calendar/performance.asp?PerfID=30055

The BAAC has changed the original time, setting it for 6:30pm, rather than 3p which is on our calendar. 

Those invited to perform include:

Brian Allen, Misha Sanderson, Yaba Tuffour, Jake Woollen, Matt McConahy, Josh Clampitt, Jennifer Brohphy, Moonju Lee, Adam Nichols, Maya Fraser.

Winter Break

We will have a break for winter beginning with December 21 and ending January 10

Spring Semester Rehearsals

We will resume rehearsals on January 11.  On January 11, we will prepare the compositions for the following week. 

January 18^th is the Martin Luther King, A Day On, not a Day Off, a day of service, where we will invite youths from underserved communities to come experience a simple music composition exercise, similar to last year’s exercise.  This year, we will be able to produce a CD of their composition for them to take home as a keepsake.  Then, we will invite the greater Bloomington Community to join us in a reading of a piece that we will perform in our April concert. 

Community members are also invited to attend that rehearsal to listen to and vote for their favorite Composition Competition piece, the winner of which will be performed at our concert which is tentatively planned for April 10, 2010.  You will also get to vote for your favorite, too. 

Spring Concert

The Spring Concert is on our web calendar tentatively planned for April 10, 2010.  We have won a grant to perform at the historic Buskirk-Chumley Theater in downtown Bloomington.  We will hope to have a firm date as soon as we sign a contract with the theater.  We really wish to thank the board for their efforts on our behalf in securing this grant.  It is truly a blessing for us when we are competing for space with all the high school theater Spring productions.

I'm very excited for our Spring 2010 and hope that you share in this excitement, too!