Great Concert...Great Year!

We had a wonderful concert on Tuesday night. Many parents came up to us telling us how wonderful the band sounded. We have posted mp3 files of both the band concert, and the Bluebonnet Classic Festival performance. We want to thank the parents for your incredible support throughout the year.

On a personal note, Mr. Wagner will be working this summer on getting together a Del Rio Middle School Band site similar to this one. Updated information will be posted on this site, as well as on the official SFMMS Band page on the school district's servers. I will not be sending out emails in the same way next year. I will have a sign-up form similar to the one on this page. All news posts to the blog will be emailed out that way. This saves time and allows me to better serve the students. Simply fill your email address into the form on the page, click Submit, and then reply to the verification email that is sent to you. This will be the last of these updates that I send out the same way. If you are interested in getting further updates on the SFMMS Band, including updates on when the DRMS Band website becomes available, please subscribe using this form.

Time Changes

We have a couple of important time changes to tell you about for the next few days with the SFMMS Band.

Solo Contest
The solo contest that is scheduled for tomorrow will begin at 8:00 instead of 9:00. This will accomodate those students who need to be in and out early. This will also allow everyone to be finished earlier. Students do not have to stay the whole time, and the earlier you get there, the earlier you will find out your ratings and get out of there!

Spring Concert
Because of the heavy rains this week, the Del Rio High School jazz concert has been rescheduled to this Tuesday May 15th. This is the same day as our concert. We have decided to work this conflict out and will begin the 6th Grade concert at 6:30, and then we encourage everyone to go to the Paul Poag Theater for the jazz concert at 7:30. Students should be in the gym before 5:00 so we can begin rehearsing then.

Other Important Dates

• Monday May 14th will be the SFMMS choir and strings concert in the SFMMS gym
• Thursday May 17th will be the DRMS choir concert at the Paul Poag Theater
• Tuesday May 22nd will be the DRMS band concert in the Del Rio Middle School Cafeteria

Bluebonnet Classic Results!

On May 5th, 2007, the San Felipe Memorial Middle School 6th Grade Beginning Band made history as the first 6th grade band from Del Rio to ever compete in a band contest. The band played Infinity March by James Curnow, Galactic Episode by John O'Reilly and Mark Williams, and Atlantis by Anne McGinty as a performance in the Bluebonnet Classic Music Festival at HF Stevens High School in San Antonio. The band was conducted by Joel Wagner and Daniel White. The band earned three First Division Superior ratings with an average score of over 285.1 out of 300. This was the highest score from any beginning band or choir in the two day competition. This netted both a First Division trophy as well as an Outstanding Performance trophy. Each of the three judges also made it a point to personally congratulate the band directors for the band's outstanding performance.

After the competition, the band members spent the remainder of the day at Six Flags Fiesta Texas and traveled back home to Del Rio in style on charter buses. Upon arrival to the recently renovated San Felipe Memorial Middle School campus at approximately 1:00am, the students were greeted by numerous parents who were all too glad to cheer, applaud, and honk their horns in celebration of the momentous occasion. Celebration once again erupted as Mr. Wagner victoriously carried the two trophies into the Band Hall.

The band's final performance, which will include all three competition pieces, will be held in the San Felipe Memorial Middle School gymnasium at 7:00pm on Tuesday May 15th. Please come support these hard-working students. Admission is free.

Related links:
mp3 downloads of the band's performance

Elementary Tour Recap

What an excellent job our band students did as we visited all 8 of the elementary campuses in Del Rio this past week! We heard so many compliments from parents, principals, and teachers. The bus drivers were also appreciative of their behavior on the buses. The band students truly represented San Felipe Memorial Middle School very well this week. You have much to be proud of!

As a result of the tremendous work that has been done, we are going to make some changes to this week's rehearsal schedule. Instead of going every day, we will have our regularly scheduled rehearsals on Monday and Tuesday from 3:30 to 5:00. We will not have any formal rehearsals on Wednesday or Thursday, although students are encouraged to come in and practice before and after school all week long. We will have a brief run-through on Friday from 3:30 to 4:15.

Then we get on the buses at 6:45 Saturday morning to travel to San Antonio. We have filled up the spots we had available to ride the bus. Thank you so much to all of the parents who have responded. The fact that we had to turn away some parents means that our students should stay safe all day long! We have an All Star Band travel permission form that will be sent home on Monday. If your child is going to be going on the field trip and be gone Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, then please be sure to either send that to school with them on Tuesday, or else make arrangements to bring it up to the school later in the week. Without this travel permission form, students will not be allowed to travel out of town with us.

We also have a solo & ensemble contest coming up on May 12th. We will spend the classes during the week of May 7th - 11th working on those. Students may also come before and after school every day that week for extra help or to work in groups.

Thank you so much for allowing us to work with your children! They definitely make both Mr. Wagner and Mr. White proud!

This Week And Next Week

This week, we have after school rehearsals for the SFMMS All Star Band! Tuesday’s rehearsal will be from 3:30 to 5:30. Wednesday’s rehearsal will again be from 3:30 until 5:00. We will be going on our elementary tour on Thursday and Friday.

On Thursday, we are scheduled to perform at Garfield, North Heights, Ruben Chavira, and Dr. Fermin Calderon. On Friday, we are scheduled at Dr. Lonnie Green, Buena Vista, East Side, and Lamar. We will have lunch at Mr. Gatti’s on both days. We will leave aftter school has begun and return around the normal time of the final bell. If you are interested in joining us for one or both days, please let us know!

Next week, we have after school rehearsals scheduled Monday through Friday from 3:30 to 5:00. GT students will be going on a field trip for some of those days and those absences will be excused. More info should be coming home and will also be posted here again in the next few days.

We already have more than enough parents who have expressed a desire to go with us. Thank you so much for your interest! Unfortunately, we cannot take everyone with us. If you are going with us, you should have already received a note letting you know. If you haven't yet gotten one, ask your child to find out why not! Again, thank you so much for everything that you do for your child's education.

All Star Band Info

Thank you so much for everything that you do to allow your children to be a part of our lives! We want to remind you about the Del Rio Solo & Ensemble Contest coming up on Saturday May 12th for all eligible students. We also want to remind you about the Band Spring Concert on Thursday May 17th. Both of these events will take place at Del Rio Middle School. We are also planning on having an end of year party after school on Friday May 18th. If you are interested in helping us organize this, please let us know.

Everything from here on only applies to the students who are involved in the All Star Band and will be traveling on the elementary tour and Fiesta Texas trips.

With the conclusion of the fifth six weeks grading period, we have nearly finalized the All Star Band students who will be performing on our elementary tour and for the Bluebonnet Classic Band Festival in San Antonio on May 5th.

We have four more rehearsals between now and the elementary tour. These are scheduled for Tuesday April 17th, Monday April 23rd, Tuesday April 2th, and Wednesday April 25th. The rehearsals will be in the band hall, and will begin after school at 3:30 and end at 5:00. We will have Mr. Rios from Del Rio High School working with us on April 24th and the rehearsal will end at 5:30. Pizza will follow and all All Star Band students are welcome to stay until 6:15pm.

The following week, we will have rehearsals every day until 5:00. These rehearsals will hep us finalize the concert program before we travel to San Antonio. We are aware that there is a field trip to NASA that week, but there will be no conflict with our schedule. We believe that we still have room available for a few more parents to travel with us to San Antonio. The only cost to travel with the band is your time and assistance that day. We will provide a free band t-shirt and Fiesta Texas ticket to any parents who will be traveling with us. We are sending home confirmations this week for those parents who have expressed interest in traveling with us. Nobody has heard anything back from us on it yet since we were waiting until grades were finalized before confirming anything.

Finalized schedules for the elementary tour and Fiesta Texas trips should be sent out next week with students. They will be posted to the band website, calendar, and blog as soon as we have them ready.