Friday, February 21, 2014

CASMEC 2014 IS HERE!

The California All State Music Education Conference is upon us! It's time for all the music teachers of California to gather in the great state of California for a fun four days of conferncing!

We kicked off the conference yesterday with more sessions offered Thursday afternoon. The Homestead HS Orchestra had an outstanding first concert of our conference. This morning was a fantastic master class with SF Symphony trumpet player Mark Inouye. One of my very own trumpet students had the opportunity to play for him during the master class. The entire experience was amazing.

Today will feature some hanging out at the exhibit halls, a professional development session "Will Teaching Festival Music Through The Common Core Lens Make My Group Sound Better?" This session will be led by Russ Sperling and Jon Grantham. Jon and I have been friends for a long time and this is the first time in six years that we will NOT be working this fine conference....but we can't stay just "attend" a conference so we are both presenting.

We welcome Travis Cross to the great state of California. Travis is the new director of bands at UCLA and will be leading this year's conference band reading session. A really highlight of that reading session is usually listening to me butcher exposed and beautiful piano parts during the sight reading.

And finally....I will be presenting today. I am presenting on the topic of music composition in the class room and my session is entitled "Compose Your Own Adventure". Check out my presentations section of my blog for more information.