So welcome to my craziness! Over the next month or so (until March 5th when Band contest is) I have one open weekend where I am not doing anything related to the band program. Not only that, but for my wife's birthday I will be celebrating with a Band Booster meeting; for my birthday I will be celebrating with a Band clinic. For Valentine's Day weekend, I will celebrate not with my loving bride, but with thousands of fellow Texas music educators at our convention and (lucky me!) with some of my students from school who are considering this same crazy life as a career when they graduate from high school. This is on the heels of craziness from the past few weeks as I prepared along with my jazz band for our Solo and Ensemble Festival this past weekend. As of the last rehearsal, I thought I was going into the performance with a solid III rating (average), so I was surprised when the results finally came back and it was seen that I along with my little band received a II (Excellent) rating! I was bursting with pride for my little band, they really did outdo themselves. I'm not sure I can take very much of the credit, other than having a little bit more control over what we played this year as opposed to last year. They did really well! So, let's continue on with the craziness that is the end of this school year. So after the convention and band clinic, I get to load up my 53-person 7/8th grade band and travel up the road to a school near San Antonio to have a pre-UIL concert where we will receive comments before the actual event. Next up is the Concert Contest for both the 7/8th grade band and the HS band. Once that has concluded we've got the 7/8th grade band preparing for their regional honor band concert auditions and performance. Then we've got a spring concert to get ready for followed by the JH solo and ensemble festival and concluding with the band trips, banquet and graduation. All that seems like it should keep me busy for around a month, but in actuality it's from now to the end of the year. That's why at one point in this blog I said it's crazy to the end of the year because it will be here before I know it. Well, now that I've caught you all up, once again it's time to go and I'll let everyone know how the great Texas Music Educator's Association Convention goes!
