Final Assembly, help, next year

Welcome back from your various trips.  Below, I believe, is a reasonable program for what to practice for our final assembly.

4th grade  from Smart Violin, Take a Walk, Take a Rest, and Smooth Sailing (the first 2 pieces work well with our guitar students, so I have decided to use them for performance); our 2 surprise by ear songs

5th & 6th grade  from Strings Extraordinaire, Que Bonita Bandera, Canon, and Hava Nagila (n.b., we will not perform Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring this year)

7th &8th grade will accompany 4 and 5/6 ensembles above; we will also perform one or two Spanish songs and a humorous version of a children's song

The final assembly will likely be on Friday, June 11, at 9am.  Because of this earlier start time (very appropriate for the last day), I need your help so that I can have the instruments ready.  It may be that I request students who can part with their instruments and music for a night load my van with instruments on Thursday; I can secure the instruments, arrive early Friday, and tune them.  Students who bring instruments on Friday would walk them to Thomas Berry hall themselves and tune up themselves (next year our pavilion may free us from some of these logistics).  More information to come as we finalize plans; I wanted to give you a heads up.

I have demonstrated the cello and viola to the rising 5th grade.  Unless I hear huge objections from the parents, I would also like to demonstrate the upright bass.  If a child or two wants to take up the bass, it would help the sound of our ensemble; the bass is currently welcomed into our public high school wind ensembles.  Parents would have to be prepared for the challenges of transporting the instrument, acquiring one (rentals are more expensive; in some places more than cello), and we'd have to find space to store the instruments when students bring them to school (so we might say no more than 2 basses should any family be interested).

In 5th grade we will focus more on ensemble playing than technique, so it is particularly important that students switching to viola, cello, or bass take lessons and start practicing this summer.  We will likely use Strictly Strings Book 2 to start the school year next year; new viola, cello, or bass players would do well to work through Strictly Strings Book 1 this summer (violin students would be welcome to do the same if a review seems helpful).


With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde