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The email from the local high school band booster parent in my small town outside of Nashville, Tennessee, Fairview High School, read:
Wow, summer is wrapping up! Some of you are back in school now, the rest of you are on your way back.
It’s an exciting couple of months for the students involved in United Sound’s new drum corps program.
It’s an Uber/InstaCart world we live in now. People can self-employ through apps for just about anything you can think of these days. It is no different for musicians.
This month, my editorial is this sparse set of photos of a trumpet made of the shell casings of the kind of bullets used in an AK47, as fired in the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
It is a percentage that is often used, and almost a cliché now. The actual number isn’t that germane, it could give or take a few points, but the big picture is instrumental music programs don’t reach the vast majority of students for a multitude of reasons.
I’m fresh off two amazing “MEA” conferences where, as executive director of TI:ME (ti-me.org), I oversee the production of professional development training sessions that teach music educators to integrate technology into the music classroom.
We all got into music careers because we love music. I got into the world of music how-to book publishing, non-profit music education management, and music education journalism because I am a musician first.
Welcome back to work! It’s a new year, a fresh start, but of course, only the midpoint for the school year.
From hurricane season in my hometown of Panama City, Florida, to wildfires all across my former home state of California, Q4 of 2018 ended with a lot of destruction and scary events resulting in unprecedented devastation.
As editor of both Choral Director and School Band and Orchestra, I’m a pretty easy mark for kids coming around and knocking on my door for a fundraiser for their programs.
Yeah man, did I get it! First time I heard the music of Stax/Volt Records’ southern-fried soul as a kid I was knocked out, inspired, and wanted to play music more than ever.