Saturday, March 20, 2010

New England Band Camp and Term 1 2010

It’s that time of year again as the regional band camp series kicks off. As usual, the camp to commence proceedings will be the New England region at Lake Keepit. Being the night before I have to leave, I thought I would quickly do a term wrap up and how things have progressed so far with teaching in Grafton, Coffs Harbour and Bellingen.

Bellingen HSC Recitals

Last night, Year 12 Bellingen High School students provided audience members from the community including parents, fellow students, tutors, musicians and people outside of the school and outstanding program. The combination of solo and ensemble performances lead to rapturous applause and even cries for an encore!

It’s not very often you are presented with the opportunity of working with a talented group of musicians, especially in this region where it can be considered to be languishing behind other regional areas in the state. But in the town of Bellingen you can definitely be assured that the arts are very well and thriving and I feel very privileged to be assisting in the development of these very fine musicians.

The next series of these public performance assessments will be held in Term 2 as we close in on HSC and AMEB examinations.

Riverina Tour Video

The Riverina Schools Tour video from 2009 is nearing completion, and will be giving an advanced screening to staff at the New England camp (hopefully). The amount of time, editing, crashing software, and frustrations in putting this video together have been worth it. However, I will be reconsidering the software I purchased to edit the footage after the amount of glitches and errors I encountered (and that’s after applying TWO patches that were meant to fix these). The only problem I am having now is burning the product as a whole, with disc menu, without having the audio go out of sync with the video. If only technology could be simpler...

New England Band Camp

I have, roughly, a five hour trip ahead of me from Coffs Harbour to the camp site. The trip shouldn’t be a problem, but after having some serious car issues earlier this week I am hoping the trip will be smooth with no hiccups or mishaps along the way. And yes, whenever I have a long trip ahead of me this does play on my mind. I don’t fear the days of the “Big Red Car” being limited or on the verge of ending, but it would be a lot more reassuring to know that I can drive a car that I would trust a lot more and feel safer in. Hopefully I won’t have to contend with a detour due to flooding this time unlike last year.

It should be an exciting week ahead as it always is. And with the trip leading right up to the New Zealand tour with the wind orchestra it makes it something to look forward to that little bit more.

Time to go pack, and get ready to hit the road!

Sunday, March 7, 2010

The GLU Holding Me Together In March

Another General Life Update, and already I have caught myself out for being a little slack in updating this blog. Yet again, things have been quite busy but it's good when we keep ourselves preoccupied! Here are a few updates for recent events and happenings.

Bellingen Addressed

In my last blog entry I addressed the biased, yet poorly formed, special investigation by A Current Affair that was aired over a week ago. In the the Saturday 7th March edition of the Coffs Coast Advocate an exceptional article was presented with the statement raised "We need the community to tell us when crime happens. If the issues are real then they will be addressed." A very valid point overlooked by the ACA. If there was so much crime in the area and it was being reported, then who is to blame? With so much fingerpointing going on towards the youth, police, and even a small amount towards the parents of the "hoodlum vigilantes", did some of the members of the community forget they have a responsibility to report the crimes that occur? And "trolling" about crimes on the ACA website won't go through to the police station, like a few people attempted on the video page. You actually have to ring the police.

Settling the Teaching

It looks like my teaching routine for the week has clicked into place, finally. With two days of teaching each in Grafton and in Bellingen I do have to make sure I am on top of things. The variety of continuing students of mine from last year, along with the new students, are a real delight to teach. What is even more impressive from the students is the work ethic displayed and desire to strive to get better at what they do. Yes you still get the occassional student that will slack off, but overall students a really raising the standard and the bar.

AMEB Closing Dates (North Coast Series)

Friday the 19th of March is the close off date for students looking to take instrumental examinations. As I have told many students of mine, the AMEB exams are an opportunity to be able to gauge where a student is at with their playing, are given the opportunity to perform, receive any advice or assistance from the examiner through feedback, and it is a personal goal to work towards.

After seven As and three Bs in 2009, more students will be entered and hopefully we can produce a similar amount of results. Students will be entered from the Preliminary and First Grades for clarinet and saxophone all the way through to an AMus candidate.

Coffs Eisteddfod

The Coffs Harbour Eisteddfod is on again this year, and hopefully we won't have the wild weather like we did in 2009 which prevented a lot of competitors from being able to perform. The close off dates for entries are March 31st. Details can be found at the website here.

This year will probably become the most compact program I have ever seen. The School Instrumental is essentially being rolled in with the Instrumental program. It seems each year the program gradually gets smaller and smaller.

All I have to say to this is we need our local teachers and tutors to enter as many students as they can to give them the opportunity to perform, and to support a fantastic local event where we can show off and uncover local talent. In a community where we are having more local professional performers stand up and be counted, it's about time more of our teachers and tutors do the same thing to encourage students to take part instead of leaving the proverbial "lamp under the bowl".

That's my GLU for the moment. Coming up soon, I'll be looking at the band camp series for 2010 including the first camp this month in the New England region.