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!