Thank you for your support!!!!!
To donate, you can use the Pay Pal link at the right, or print this form and send in a check to the address on the form.
For my April 15th message, click here.
For my April 22nd message, click here.
(includes the Karl Paulnack speech)
Thank you to everyone who made a donation to the MTHS Band Program during our 2009 Pledge Drive. The students, parents, and I deeply appreciate it.
You may be wondering why our music program has to continuously fundraise when other subjects in school don’t. That is a very good question! I wish I knew the answer to it! The truth is, I do know the answer: our music program is supported by our parents and our students, not by our school. Sure, the school pays for the teachers. But beyond that, we don’t receive much monetary support for our curriculum.
I know for many people this comes as a shock. What do you mean the school doesn’t provide monetary support for the program? It’s true! We are a self-sufficient organization. We pay for our own curricular materials, our own equipment, our own transportation (with a little help from the district), our own travel expenses, our own uniforms, our own festival fees, even our own furniture.
What I’m trying to say, is that without your support, we wouldn’t be able to experience and have many of the things that we do. Here is a small sampling of where this money has gone in the past.
Replacement chairs for the music rooms - $80 each
Replacement Music Stands - $40 each
Band Arrangements - $80 each (on average)
Jazz Band Arrangements - $50 each (on average)
Maria Schneider Arrangements - $115 each
Festival entry fees
Jazz Bands: $200 per ensemble (on average)
Concert Bands: $300 per ensemble (on average)
Transportation (buses) – over $5600
Clinicians - $50 per hour of instruction (In 2008-2009 we spent nearly $4000 in this category alone.)
Justin DiCioccio’s clinic with Jazz 1 (I don’t want to publicize the amount…not cheap! But so worth it!)
We end up spending an average of about $1500 each year on sheet music, sometimes more, sometimes less. It depends on the groups and if I have appropriate music for them in the library already. Each ensemble is unique and I try to accentuate our strengths while working to improve our weakness through the literature I choose. I do this through classic works as well as newer music.
Here are some of the things that are on my wish list, many of which have been there for a long time:
Orchestra Bells - $1200
Decent System for listening to recordings in the band room - $1500
New drum set cymbals - $600
More frequent piano tuning - $90 each time
New Eastman Euphonium - $1524 (Instruments like the Euphonium are provided by our program to loan to students for the year since most students do not choose or buy an instrument like this for themselves. These instruments are necessary to complete the instrumentation needed to perform symphonic band music.
A few years ago we invested some money to hire Prof. Tim Salzman (director of Bands at the University of Washington) to direct our first annual Summer Concert Band Workshop. It was expensive that first year, but this endeavor turned into a wonderful partnership with the University of Washington, unlike any other type of workshop I’m familiar with anywhere. Now Prof. Salzman comes and brings with him his top conducting students to work with our students for a whole week. What a rewarding investment that turned out to be! I’m so grateful to work with music boosters who have the courage to try new ideas and provide unique and wonderful learning opportunities like this for our students.
Another thing I would really love to do is have a piece of music commissioned for our students at Mountlake Terrace High School. Our community of supporters ends up actually being responsible for a piece of music being added to band or jazz band repertoire. It would be very exciting and is an important learning activity for the students to be a part of. This action says, “we don’t assume someone else is going to support composers to write music. We support them, because we value the contributions that artists and musicians make to our culture and to our society.” And we model this for our students! A commissioned piece can run anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a couple of thousand dollars depending on the length and complexity.
Wow! The MTHS Band Program is a place where extraordinary things happen all the time for all types of kids. And thanks to your generous support, even more new and exciting things can happen for our students! Let’s continue and further our tradition of excellence by providing the necessary funding that allows these things to happen.
Thank you,
Darin Faul
Band Director |
