Community News
What does the band do after football season?
By Louis Foster
Mar 8, 2010, 21:10

BAND “SEASON”
By Louis Foster
Band Director


“What does the band do after football season?” is a question I am always asked. It is a joke among band directors that the public thinks the band has the rest of the year “off” after football season. Nothing could be further from the truth! We stay busy all year. In fact, we are in the middle of “Band Season”, the time when the band actually performs for its own benefit.

During the Fall of the year, we perform for the school and community at football games, parades, community programs, and other events. After the MLK Day Parade in January, we get down to the serious business of preparing difficult pieces of music to be judged by a strict set of standards set forth by the Georgia Music Educators Association. This is our CRCT, out GHSGT, our accountability.

Concert performance is what makes band an art form, and it is not easy transforming a group of students from loud, brassy outdoor musicians (marching band) into a controlled, expressive Concert Band. It takes a lot of work, and students need to learn a lot of group skills as well as individual musical skills to perform well as a band.

As with most things, drill and repetition are necessary to develop these skills. Learning to listen “across the band” and make parts fit together is important. Reading music notation correctly, then being able to control the breath, tongue, and fingers to play precisely with everyone else requires great ability to multi-task.

Add to this the responsibility to play expressively – using the correct articulation, knowing which notes to add emphasis to, controlling the rise and fall of dynamics, playing in the correct style – and the students have an almost overwhelming amount of information to remember and control.

That is why it takes years to train a musician – particularly one who must master an instrument and then fit seamlessly into a group that responds together to the same pulse and the same emotional style of varying individual pieces of music. Fortunately, students, parents, and friends can enjoy the musical outcomes at every level of learning as well as observing the growth of the musicians and bands.

There are different levels of musical challenge, but only one standard of musical performance – to create a moving experience among the performers that can be shared by a listening audience. Bleckley County Middle School Band has, for the past several years, chosen music from the Level 2 Music List as compiled by the Georgia Music Educators Association.

Bleckley County High School has, for years, chosen music from the Level 4 Music List. This year, our bands will participate in our District Large Group Performance Evaluation event to be held at Perry High School, March 18-20. The Middle School Band will perform at 10:30 AM on Friday, March 19, in the Perry High School Fine Arts Auditorium. The BCHS High School Band will perform on the same stage at 7:15 PM on Saturday, March 20. All community members are urged to come and support our young musicians as they perform for the judges.

There will be a Pre-Festival Concert at the Bleckley County High School Auditorium on Tuesday, March 16, at 7:00 PM. Both the Middle School Band and High School Band will perform their three musical selections, and there will be an explanation given to the audience of the standards that the bands will be judged by.

Several area band directors will be on hand to offer comments and encouragement . The concert is free. If you want to see the results of months of hard work in class, after school rehearsals, and Saturday rehearsals, come and enjoy this concert. You’ll enjoy it and out students will appreciate your support. After all, it is Band “Season”!


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