Practice Monday!

Hello everybody! I hope everyone's looking forward to practice on Monday - I know I will be. We will be continuing more work revisiting Begin the Beguine, and expect to hit some of the First Circle again with full rhythm section.

We will also be working on the new charts. Sing, Sing, Sing sounded great at the last practice, so that one is almost ready to go.

On a side note, for those who are not on facebook, there was a message posted just relaying the info that Sierra Music Publications (www.sierramusic.com) has just revealed the second batch of new publications for 2010 of awesome, blow-your-face-off, advanced charts. Check them out. I'm particularly liking "Frame for the Blues" by Slide Hampton. And if you didn't hear the first batch and you have some free time to listen to some awesome, revitalized music, you should do so.

See everyone on Monday, and enjoy the rest of this beautiful weekend (thus far).

Practice Tomorrow!

Hello all. This is just a reminder that there's practice tomorrow, and we will be continuing work on Rhythm Of Our World, as well as Theme from Sesame Street and something else that's quite nostalgic...

A short message for this week, but thanks to all who played on Thursday - the audience really appreciated us stepping up and stepping in to fill what would have been a void during the intermission at the summer concert series. See you all tomorrow! :)

Practice Recap: 12 July 2010

Hey everybody! Great job at practice last night. We continued with some great work on Nostalgia in Times Square, Sing Sing Sing, and Rhythm Of Our World. The latter is the toughest piece we have that we're working on at the moment, with the exception being that we will be diving back into The First Circle and cleaning that one up until it's absolutely solid - another big task.

So, while you're practicing this week, make sure you focus on Rhythm. We will probably go back to Theme from Sesame Street next week two, so it's definitely something to look through at some point.

Again, there is no performance on Thursday, so unless you're playing elsewhere (which it is known that some of you are) or are playing the Summer Band Concert Series in Doylestown, have a happy time focusing on a few charts. And remember, as to active rehearsing, In the Stone, Samba Ti Kaye and Ride the Wind are now on the retired list - we may bring them out again if we have long performances and need more pieces that we know, but they're not the ones to concentrate on right now.

Who knows if The First Circle and Malaguena will ever be retired. It doesn't seem like that... they're just.... beyond it...

Have a good week, and see you at the next practice! :)

Practice Recap, No Performance on Saturday, Practice Monday...

Okay, so three quick messages to update on the blog. The first is a thanks to everyone at practice on Monday - I know it was the very end of a holiday weekend that spilled over into Monday with some people having a day of rest and others with workplaces still open - at any rate, we got a lot of positive work done. As of Friday night, practice had still been up in the air, which is why messages were sent out as to availability for Monday. Since a majority of the band could rehearse, we did. If you couldn't be there Monday, that's fine, and I hope everyone had a lovely holiday weekend.

Also, there will be no performance on Saturday as we are still light on players and personally my work schedule does not allow for it, with a third of my work's staff out on vacation, etc. Thank you all for you willingness to come out and do it to those that could, but we will just have to plan ahead for the next performance.

We will have practice on Monday when we will continue work on the Sandoval, Nostalgia and Sesame Street. We laid some of the foundations for work on these pieces on Monday, and we will continue to do so as we start to "shelve" some of the pieces we've been playing for a while, like Ride the Wind and Samba Ti Kaye.

Practice Tonight!

So, we will in fact have practice tonight, and make sure you have Rhythm of Our World in your folders. It was passed out quite some time ago and is on the second CD that was distributed if you want to listen to it ahead of time. We will also be cleaning up some of the other pieces.

A recap of Friday night's performance will be posted later, but it went really well and the audience really seemed to enjoy the music - this was also confirmed by the First Friday music organizer in town.

Anyway, see you tonight! :)