Congratulations, Auditions, and Weekly Announcements - Week of 11.13.2023

Panther Band Family,

First and foremost, I want to congratulate all of you on the historic marching season we just completed. As I look back, I can’t help but feel incredibly humbled and grateful to have joined such a supportive, positive, and selfless community. Parents, thank you so much for all of your time, effort, and trust. We could not have achieved any level of success this year without your support - we are truly indebted to you. The directors have already been talking about 2024 - we expect to pick up next season close to where we ended this one. Very exciting!

Speaking of next season, the backbone of any strong music program is the concert season, which we are quickly pivoting into. This year, wind players are auditioning for placement into one of two (or hopefully, three) concert bands. (Percussionists had their auditions last week.) Last week, the directors collected all before- and after-school conflicts for each student, so when we conclude auditions, we can look at our schedule conflict matrix and see if it is possible to have three concert band rehearsals each day.

We are looking at the possibility of three independent concert bands for two reasons: 1. overall band enrollment and number of students per section (which is FANTASTIC - growth is huge for our program!) and 2. providing more opportunities for students to receive more specialized feedback and information from the directors while being in an ensemble with peers of a similar ability level. When students are given the opportunity to shine on their respective parts, they will. Smaller concert ensembles create smaller sections - this allows every student to truly ‘own’ their part.

Students signed up for audition times before school, during their class period, or after school, Monday through Wednesday. Their audition consists of either some selections of the All-State etudes (if they were learning that material in the Monday Masterclasses) or a small theme and variation we passed out weeks ago. Their audition is for the director team in the office - we will also be making audio recordings of each audition should one of the directors be unable to hear an audition live. Once we’ve scored the auditions, we will look at the schedule conflict matrix to see how many concert ensembles we will have and when they will rehearse.

We are SO excited to be moving into the next part of our curriculum! Concert season, chamber ensembles, and solos give our students the opportunity to explore music we would never be able to play in the marching season and it is arguably where we see the most musical development. We can’t wait to share that with all of you!

The band calendar is accurate - in lieu of attaching a Google Doc (this week), I will ask you all to refer to it.

Have a great night. Go Panthers!

Joshua Muñoz
Director of Bands
Liberty Hill High School
www.lhpantherband.org