CMEA Regional Band Festival - Results and Photos

Saturday, March 9th was the Regional Band Festival, in which 13 local instrumental groups performed. Each year there are two music educators who are adjudicators for the event, and they add valuable insight for growth of the groups. The adjudicator for our band was Dr. Cynthia Hutton, Director of Bands at Southern Oregon University.

This is the message from Mrs. Wiseman in regards to the festival: "I want to congratulate those who performed Saturday at the Music Festival here in Redding. You did a fantastic job on the 3 pieces we played. Thank you so much for working so hard and giving up a few hours on your Saturday afternoon. Go Spartans!!!!! We received an Excellent rating. The judge had a lot of very good things that she shared with us."

March Booster Meeting

Here are some topics we covered last night at the March Band Parent Booster Meeting.

A Marie Callender's pie fundraiser will begin on Monday, March 11th. A large portion of funds from each pie sold goes to the band, so this could be an amazing fundraiser for us! Click on this picture of Marie Callender's featured pie for March, Luscious Lemon Cake Pie, to be directed to their website to check out the entire pie menu. (Please note that some pies and cheesecakes will be excluded from this offer.)

March 27th is the Sequoia Open House. Once again we will be doing a pizza dinner fundraiser. Dinner will be served beginning at 5:00pm, it will include a pizza slice, salad, drink and cookie for $5.00. A Sign-Up Genius will go out soon for volunteers to help set-up, serve, take money and clean up, as well as for food donations such as salad dressing. Jazz Band will be playing during Open House in the 8th grade commons.

April 18th is our Spring Concert, which will be at 6:30pm. Students need to be in the band room by 6:00pm. The line up will be Jazz Band - Beginning Band - Intermission - Intermediate Band - Advanced Band. We will be working towards having a variety of raffle baskets, with each band section responsible for a particular theme, and items for the baskets will be due by April 12th.

May 9th has been chosen as the date for an 8th grade field trip. All 8th graders will have the opportunity to see the Shasta High School performance of Phantom of the Opera at the David Marr Theater. The cost per seat is approximately $15, and students with money in their account can use those funds towards the ticket cost. We will purchase tickets as a group so that we are all seated in the same area of the theater. We may need a few chaperones for this event, which will be on a first-come basis, meaning that the first parents to pay for a ticket will be able to chaperone this event. Please note that there are no matinee performances available for this musical, so this is on a Thursday evening, and your students will need to have their own transportation to and from the event.

Band Cowboy uniforms will be worn for ALL upcoming parades. The school will provide to each student a straw hat, yellow bandana and printed t-shirt. These will be checked out to each student at the Red Bluff Parade and will be the responsibility of each student until the end of the school year. Each student and parent will be given a letter to sign that outlines the policies regarding their responsibility for the uniform. The students are required to complete the uniform with their own jeans (no holes), black socks, and marching shoes.

The first of our spring parades is on Saturday, April 20th in Red Bluff. If the cost is appropriate, we will be taking a school bus from Sequoia to Red Bluff for this parade.

If you have any conflict with this or any other upcoming parade date you must notify Mrs. Wiseman right away!

Early March Happenings

Happy March to all, I hope you can get out and enjoy the beautiful weather before more rain sets in.

We have new weekly practice sheets that everyone should now be familiar with. These sheets are a way to keep students actively involved in their practice, giving more thought into how and why they practice, with tips on how to improve their practice time. Parents still need to sign the practice sheet, and they are now due on Mondays. No longer accepted are random pieces of paper with minutes written on them. This change took place for practice sheets due February 25th, all weeks prior to that will still use the old practice sheets. Each week our Documents page will be updated with the current practice sheet, with only the few current weeks available on that page. If at any time you are missing a week that is not available on our site, you will need to see Mrs. Wiseman.

Next Wednesday, March 6th is our Band Parent Booster Meeting. This will be at 6:30pm in the band room. We will be working on finalizing details for our Open House dinner which will be on March 27th, and discussing upcoming band events. As always we look for volunteers and input from parents, and we encourage parents of 5th, 6th and 7th graders to start becoming involved as we have many parents of 8th graders leaving the boosters in June with their graduating student.

A week from now on Saturday, March 9th is the CMEA Regional Band Festival. Band is sounding really great on these songs! The festival takes place at the David Marr Theater. We play at 1pm on the theater stage, and you need to be in one of the warm up rooms within the Shasta Learning Center building by 12:15. Attire for this is Concert: White shirt, black pants or skirt, black socks, black shoes. If you are coming from another activity, make sure you have your instruments and clothes with you. Mrs. Wiseman will collect music on Friday, so no one has to worry about bringing music for this. She will also have what extra percussion equipment is needed.

We are the first group after lunch, so after our performance you are welcome to stay and listen to any other groups that perform. The group to follow us is the Shasta High School Concert Band who performs at 1:35pm. This group is first year band students at Shasta, primarily Freshman, so you will see some familiar faces!

Those who let Mrs. Wiseman know ahead of time of their absence are asked to record their parts for the 3 songs we will play for their grade. If you have no means of recording on computer, you will have to set a time with Mrs. Wiseman to come in either before school or after school to play your parts, as there will be no time in class for her to listen to you. The 3 songs are “Dedicatory Overture”, “El Capitan” and “Eternal Hope”.

If you like to stay up to date on all our events, make sure you check out our Calendar page, as it has all upcoming events with information on where to be, when to be there, and what to wear! This information is always kept up to date, so be sure to check back closer to an event date to make sure you have the current details.

Look for another blog post next week after our booster meeting. We will have updated details on upcoming events such as Open House and an 8th grade evening trip to see a local musical!