Reflection, adjustment, and realignment are a key part to building a great program. This past year I was super happy with the entire year, more than ever. We had a great band from the first day of camp through the dome. Great friendships, great music, and a phenomenal year. Unfortunately, the judging results didn’t reflect a meteoric rise through the class. Since we are all competitive, I have been thinking all year about the direction of the program, what we are doing and where we are going, so that we may be able to get more recognition numerically from the judging community. Our kids deserve to win, and with that in mind, I have been brainstorming the future direction of the program. First things first, we will keep all the great things we have going for us right on track. Please read on.
Reflecting upon the past season it is obvious that by writing a simple show musically we got away from what our strength is, music. We marched great, the guard looked phenomenal, pit was better than ever, battery was solid and magical as usual, and everything was tight (no phasing at the dome at all, a first) but by making the music easy and getting away from our strength of a solid and challenging musical program, we lost a large part of what was carrying us to high scores in the past, our music.....our wind sound. Last year one of the ensemble music judges had us in 2nd place at the dome.
This year, with my arrangements, which I deliberately made easy, we got away from the music and we need to get back to it.
I asked John Oddo in the locker room what is going on here with the judging? What are we doing wrong, whey are we not getting recognized? He then went on to say "Do you want me to blow smoke at you or tell you my opinion?" As I always do, when I ask John, I want a real answer. John is one of the top marching people in the country, a member of the drum corps hall of fame, he is brought in all over the nation to clinic and help drum corps and marching bands. He then went on to say something very interesting, door opening for me and true. He said "We haven't found our Niche." That was a lightbulb moment for me. Yes, we have been floundering, going in a different direction each year, not really grabbing onto a style or "the kind of band we are" or "the type of shows we do" going through 4 or 5 phases in my 8 years here.
When I got home I went through historically what we have done since I got to Roslyn.
My 8 years directing at Roslyn, 5 phases, not a real way to create an identity or culture of "What we do." Yes other bands do this all the time, each year they do a different type of show. However, the best programs have an identity. It makes it easier to culturally build a program. Please notice, I have no judges results here, this all has nothing to do with that.
Phase 1
2004 Elton John Show (pop rock show)
2005 Bon Jovi Show (pop rock show)
Phase 2
2006 Piano Lesson (innovative, unusual drama show)
2007 The Workout (innovative, unusual drama show)
Phase 3
2008 Zarabanda (straight ahead, classical, movie music type show)
2009 Gold Rush (straight ahead, classical, movie music type show)
Phase 4
2010 Straight Classical music with actors
Phase 5
2011 The Playdate (innovative, unusual drama show, easiest music we have ever done)
Phase 6 (final phase hopefully)
So after much thought, pretty much round the clock for the past months, I have decided that we need to try the Broadway direction. There are a whole bunch of reasons for this.
1. Our culture in Roslyn will support and embrace this. Broadway is a big part of our lives in Roslyn, our kids go to shows regularly, know the idiom, and it is in our culture.
2. The music will be more demanding and show us off.
3. People will recognize what we are doing.
4. The shows will be fun.
5. We can pump out a stream of great shows, people will know what we do, and it will be exciting whenever Roslyn takes the field.
With that being said, I think the perfect show to kick us off in this direction is Wicked. Our Roslyn community and family will be so excited, it will inject energy into our program, and we will most likely pick up kids. The style is great and these arrangements (now on the downloads page) are true to the show, demanding, recognizable, and fun. In addition, Wicked is also one of the hottest shows right now.
I have had my eye on this Wicked show for many years but it was only available to our zip code the past month. Always wanting to do this show after I saw the show myself, I have periodically checked the regional protection on these arrangements and the publisher just recently made it available to our zip code in Roslyn. I thought this was a sign.
Since we are dealing with the time factor here at Roslyn as always, to maximize our 80 hours of rehearsing I would like to order this, Rob and I can get the arrangements to our in school bands to work on after the concerts and throughout the year, and John can write the drum parts now so that we can really get a jump on this. Proper prior planning and we can be competitive in our class. I know that we totally belong in SS2 and would like to stay there.
As usual, I will write the drill with Stephanie, make it simple so that we can max out this music and with Jimmy's help we can march great and nail this thing. I would like to add a bunch of horn pops into the show, we can figure that out early as well so that we can start rehearsing it. A box sequence is in the works as well.
We will have two solo dancers, one in white and one in green, pretty self explanatory, they will be the witches dancing solo throughout the show. We will keep our dancers as well. No speakers, no talking, nothing. We will have auditions for the two dancers. I think this will be the best show ever! Listen to it on the downloads page of the website.
They are Hal Leonard arrangements with that annoying beep every 40 seconds, I am planning on making a recording with the Wind Ensemble and Mr. Oddo, Mr. Carman and Mr. Romeo playing the new drum parts once they are written. The audio is now on the website. We will have the music online asap.
