Winter Park Band Notes
February 25, 2018
From Mr. Blackmer
Congratulations, again, to the members of the Winter Park High School Wind Symphony on their incredible performance this past Thursday at the CBDNA/NBA Southern Division Conference held on the campus of USF! Also, many thanks to our parent chaperones who traveled with us to Tampa: Lou Fattore, Rennie Ashcraft, Lee McBurney, and Willson McBurney (who also drove our equipment truck). Recordings from Thursday's performance can be found HERE.
The CBDNA (College Band Directors National Association) is a national organization of collegiate band directors broken into six regional divisions. The Southern Division consists of the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The CBDNA Southern Division produces a regional conference bi-annually in one of those regional states. For the past several years, they have partnered with the National Band Association (NBA) for this conference to provide a more diverse outreach to both collegiate and secondary school band programs and their directors. For this year's conference, there were seven collegiate bands represented, along with 2 adult community bands, 2 middle school bands, and 2 high school bands, of which the Winter Park Wind Symphony was one. Selection to perform at this conference is through an blind audition process that includes previous concert recordings from the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 school years.
This Wednesday, our Wind Symphony will travel to the University of North Florida for a shared concert with their Wind Symphony. Our portion of the program will include The Circus Bee (Henry Fillmore) and Symphony No. 4 (David Maslanka). More details can be found in the itinerary on the Band website.
Our Concert MPA is also this week! This year's Concert MPA is being hosted at Olympia HS, and all performances are free and open to the public. Please consider coming out to support your child's Band as they perform at MPA - it is always nice to have an audience in addition to the adjudicators! The Symphonic Band will be performing on Thursday, March 1, and both the Concert Band and Wind Symphony will be on Friday, March 2. Please see the itinerary on the Band website and note that all Concert Band freshman will report directly to the Main Campus on Friday - do not go to the 9th Grade Center!
Speaking of MPA - congratulations to Mrs. Bitters, Mr. Parrish, and the Park Philharmonic on their superior rating at Orchestra MPA this past Friday! I know for all of the wind and percussion players, it was a long day on Thursday with an early wake-up on Friday, but you all sounded terrific! Bravo!
Also, congratulations to our Winter Park Winter Guard on their 11th place finish at the Cypress Creek show yesterday! The Guard had a 10 point increase from their Premiere Show score.
Finally, the audition materials for the 2018-2019 Wind Symphony are now up on the Band website. I encourage all of our Winter Park Band students to consider preparing an audition for Wind Symphony. There is not a "set number" of players for each section and I generally take everyone who has a successful audition. There are no instrument quotas! Please see out help from Mr. Clemente or me, or even better, from a current Wind Symphony senior. The direct link to the audition requirements can be found HERE.
All the Best,
Mr. Blackmer
Drum Major Auditions
Drum Major auditions for the 2018-2019 "Sound of the Wildcats" Marching Band will be held on Wednesday, March 28 at 2:30 PM in the Band Room (this is an extended Wednesday school day).
Interested students should check-out the Drum Major Audition Requirements posted in the Band Room, and get with our current Drum Majors (David Johnston, Mitchell Thomas, Colin Urbina, and Dylan Wagg) for information regarding "audition clinic sessions" occurring over the next several weeks.
Mattress Fundraiser - March 10
Our Mattress Sale Fundraiser is less than 2 weeks away! On Saturday, March 10, the Winter Park Bands will be holding our first Mattress Sale Fundraiser in our West Cafeteria!
We have been getting good feedback from the yard signs with many people asking about details. Please consider using the poster below to spread the word, and don't forget those yard signs!
The other image below is the referral flyer. This flyer is for students and/or parents to give out to potential mattress customers. They do not need to be printed in color, and mattress customers may "dedicate" a sale to a specific Band student on the day of the sale, with or without the flyer.
Every mattress sold benefits the Band students and the Program. For each mattress sold in a student's name, that student will a cash bonus (1 mattress = $25, 2 = $50, and 3 = $100). These cash bonuses are "real money," not credit toward Band fees. Gregg Wallace and CFS will cut a check made payable to the student to use however they'd like. In addition to this, the top selling section will receive a large portion of the total profits into their Band Accounts!
Again, spread the word!
Amazon Fundraising Opportunity!
Even though the holiday season is past us, this is still an excellent tool to raise money for the Band every time you shop at Amazon. The Winter Park High School Alumni Band Association is a registered charity on Smile.Amazon.com, so please remember to use this unique link to shop at Amazon every time, and a small percentage of the sale (at no cost to you) will automatically be sent quarterly to the WPHSABAA account and then donated to the Winter Park Band Program. If we all use this link every time, we can raise funds on an ongoing basis to help the band! https://smile.amazon.com/ch/27-0964817
If you have any questions, contact Jane Claus at janeclaus@live.com.
Winter Guard Rehearsal
Monday, Feb 26, 2018, 05:00 PM
Winter Park 9th Grade Center, Huntington Avenue, Winter Park, FL, USA
Wind Symphony @ UNF
Wednesday, Feb 28, 2018, 12:30 PM
1 University of North Fl Drive, Jacksonville, FL, USA
Winter Guard Rehearsal
Wednesday, Feb 28, 2018, 05:00 PM
Winter Park 9th Grade Center, Huntington Avenue, Winter Park, FL, USA
Symphonic Band @ Concert MPA
Thursday, Mar 1, 2018, 10:30 AM
Olympia High School, South Apopka Vineland Road, Orlando, FL, USA
Concert Band @ Concert MPA
Freshman report directly to the Main Campus on this day. Do not go to the Ninth Grade Center!