The 2017 AMEA Professional Development Conference was a smashing success! The AOA welcomed BYU Professor Emeritus and longtime orchestra composer and educator, Dr. Andrew Dabczynski, as a guest clinician for three sessions, sponsored by the AMEA, J.W. Pepper, and Alfred Publishing.  We all learned a great deal about helping young students with sight-reading, teaching Baroque beyond just the notes on the page, and creating a deeper learning experience in our classrooms or studios.  Besides Dr. Dabczynski, we hosted or co-hosted sessions by Jacob Bitinas, Anne Witt, Blake Richardson, and Robert Grogan on everything from technology in the classroom to dealing with parents.  I certainly learned a great deal and I know other conference participants did as well.  Next year, we plan to increase the string and orchestra presence at the AMEA conference, and we hope you will join us in Birmingham.  Besides presenting outstanding clinicians, in 2018 we plan to involve pre-college and collegiate chamber groups in masterclass type sessions as well as lobby performances.  Our goal is to begin to flood the conference with string and orchestra students and increase our presence.  Along those lines, the AOA is looking at moving the All-State Orchestra Festival to the AMEA conference starting in 2020.

What especially stood out to me at the 2017 AMEA conference was simply how determined the orchestra community in Alabama is.  As everyone knows, we are the red-headed step-child of music education in Alabama.  But that is not stopping the level of All-State Orchestra from rising every single year.  Our featured orchestra, the University of Alabama’s Huxford Symphony Orchestra, led by Blake Richardson, presented a simply spectacular performance of American music.  What heartened me most is that some band directors heard the performance and were blown away.  Exposing the band community to the potential of a full orchestra is a crucial step toward increasing orchestra programs and opportunities for students in this state.  In the same vein, as I played Copland’s majestic 3rd Symphony with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra last week, I couldn’t help but wish every single music student in Alabama, string or band, could have been present.  To me, there is nothing quite as majestic as the full symphony orchestra.

We will soon welcome conductors Sandra Dackow, Foster Beyers, and Christina Chen-Beyers, and composer, Alejandro Basulto-Martinez, to work with talented orchestra students from across the state.  The All-State Orchestra will be held February 9-12 at the University of Alabama.  Later this spring, the Alabama Orchestra Association will host our second annual Orchestral Musical Performance Assessments.  Our April 21 location will be Auburn University, and the University of North Alabama will host ensembles from across the state on April 22.  Registration is available at www.alabamaorchestraassociation.org.  We hope to see full orchestras, string orchestras, and even guitar ensembles again this year.  Please encourage your local strings or orchestra programs to participate.  At the AOA, we are orchestrating excellence!

Autumn in Alabama. Leaves changing, a break in the heat, and of course… All-State Orchestra auditions!

OK, back to reality. Fall in Alabama is reserved for football and marching band. I know because I was and still am a part of it (football fandom, at least!). As a serious cellist growing up in Alabama, I ended up playing trumpet in band because schools in the Birmingham metro area did not offer string programs of any sort. My experience in band was terrific, and my band directors, Kim Bain and Jim Duren, were and still are as good as it gets. I was a pretty decent trumpeter, and I had many outstanding classmates, but when I think back to those days, All-State Orchestra never seemed to be on the radar in band circles. A few brave souls ventured into the Alabama Youth Symphony, and were thus indoctrinated into the orchestra world, but the large majority didn’t even consider orchestra, although they would participate in several honor bands throughout the year. Now, as a professional cellist and official ambassador of the orchestra community, I would like to begin to strengthen the ties between our outstanding band programs, and the orchestra opportunities offered in this state.

Do not be afraid! Band students who participate in orchestra will only become stronger band players. They will gain confidence from playing individual parts, learn nuance from balancing with stringed instruments, master skills such as transposition, and be exposed to centuries-worth of timeless orchestral repertoire. I remember sensing a fear of the unknown when terrific wind players decided not to audition for All-State or youth orchestra. If you are a parent or band director, even without an orchestral background, I hope you will encourage your students to participate in orchestra. It may open up a future in orchestral performance to them. If you are lucky enough to have strings at your school, collaborate on a full orchestra production, or simply spend a class period playing part of a Mahler symphony for your students. You may transform somebody’s world, and that is our goal as educators and parents, is it not?

It is my great honor to announce our fantastic 2017 All-State Orchestra conductors. Directing the Festival Orchestra will be Dr. Sandra Dackow, Music Director of the Hershey (PA) Symphony Orchestra, and well-known arranger. Leading the Sinfonia and Consort Orchestras will be a husband/wife duo. Foster Beyers, Sinfonia conductor, is the newly appointed Director of Orchestras at James Madison University, after spending several years in the same position at Concordia College in Minnesota. Dr. Christina Chen-Beyers, Consort conductor, has extensive experience with collegiate, youth, and string orchestras in Western Minnesota and the Eastern Dakotas. Complete bios can be found in this edition of Ala Breve and at www.alabamaorchestraassociation.org.

Our second annual Orchestra MPAs will be held April 21 and 22, 2017! We are planning two host sites this year – a northern regional at UNA (Florence), and a South Central regional at ASU (Montgomery). At time of press, details are still being hammered out, but by the time you are reading this, we should have the application process in full swing. Youth Orchestras, school string programs, guitar ensembles, and any other string-involved ensembles are encouraged to register. We had 14 groups participate last year, and we hope two locations will help us increase this number even further. So come on down – ALL are welcome!

I am honored to succeed Sarah Schrader as President of the Alabama Orchestra Association. Under Sarah’s leadership, All-State Orchestra participation increased, and the AOA successfully ran Alabama’s first ever Orchestra Music Performance Assessment for full orchestras, string orchestras, and guitar ensembles this past April. Hosted by Auburn University, the event was a huge success and we plan for it to become an annual event!

AOA’s new executive board includes President-elect Dr. Guy Harrison (Auburn University), Secretary Dr. Daniel Stevens (UNA), and Treasurer Jacob Frank (Decatur Youth Orchestras). I myself teach at Samford University in Birmingham. The four of us, along with Past-President Sarah Schrader, are professional musicians and educators at all levels, from elementary to higher education. We are all strongly invested in building and strengthening programs across the state, and I encourage you to reach out to any of us with ideas on how we can create, support, and strengthen orchestras and string ensembles across Alabama.

It is no secret that Alabama lags far behind other states in public school string and orchestra programs. Each student who participates in All-State Orchestra, OMPA, youth orchestra, or their school program is a testament to the parents, teachers, and administrators who are invested in exposing our students to the greatest music of the past 350 years. With a full slate of high profile clinicians and conductors coming to Alabama to work with our children during the AMEA conference, All-State, and OMPA, I hope that even more school administrators will become aware of the value of orchestra and strings. Just imagine the school musical with a live, student orchestra in the pit, or a collaborative concert between the choir and orchestra!

Students in Alabama deserve opportunities to experience string and orchestral playing, just like they do in surrounding states and around the country. The University of Alabama, Samford, Auburn, and UNA are all producing high quality music educators who would love to remain in Alabama and start string or orchestra programs. Instead, they are leaving for opportunities in Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas to name a few. Take pride in not only supporting music education, but supporting professional and youth orchestras across the state. While we obviously need more string programs, it is just as important that our wind players are introduced to the exhilaration of symphonic playing. Orchestra must not be merely a niche, but an invaluable vehicle of fine art that opens doors to musical appreciation, education, and performance.

I am excited to announce that Dr. Andrew Dabczynski has accepted our invitation to present three sessions at the 2017 AMEA conference as one of our distinguished clinicians. Professor of Music Education at Brigham Young University, Dr. Dabczynski is co-author of the String Explorer series of method books. In addition to an exciting state conference, we will welcome Dr. Sandra Dackow (Festival), Dr. Foster Beyers (Sinfonia), and Dr. Christina Chen-Beyers as our 2017 All-State Orchestra conductors. Under the direction of Dr. Dackow, the Festival Orchestra will present the world premiere of Alejandro Basulto-Martinez’ Triptico de Luz, winner of AOA’s 2017 composition competition. Please visit www.alabamorchestrassociation.org for more information on our guests, and event dates including 2017 OMPA which will occur in the Spring at a date TBD.

We welcome you to join us for an exciting upcoming year!

AOA President’s Column Archive

As the school year comes to an end, take a moment and reflect on all the amazing things you accomplished this year. As you reflect, I hope you are thinking on how you and your students have grown, developed, bonded, and had a great time through music.

AOA has had an amazing year and I am proud to have been a part of it! We had stellar turnout for All State Orchestra, held the VERY FIRST Orchestra Music Performance Assessment, and elected rock star officers for 2016-2018.

AOA took a huge step forward this year and held the its first statewide Orchestra Music Performance Assessment (OMPA). The festival was a huge success! We had 14 ensembles from around the state travel to Auburn University on April 22nd and 23rd to perform in front of judges and peers. Full Orchestra, String Orchestra, and Guitar Ensembles from all ends of the state participated coming from as far away as Florence and Mobile. I am so thrilled that so many teachers took advantage of this opportunity to perform away from their home town. It was a joy to listen to each and every one of the orchestras and I am so proud of what our talented directors are accomplishing with their students. You should all be commended for the jobs you are doing and for taking the initiative to bring your students across the state to experience this type of competition. I hope your experience was better than expected! Thank you Dr. Guy Harrison for your leadership in spearheading the planning of and hosting this event. Thank you also Dr. Anne Witt, Dr. Howard Goldstein, Dr. Blake Richardson and Melissa Dufrechou for making yourselves available to judge this event. Thank you Sam Nordlund, Julie Hornstein, Dr. Kathy King, Amy Nice, April MacDonald, and the Auburn University Music Ambassadors for all your help during the Festival. It would not have been a success without you.

Groups receiving a superior rating at the 2016 OMPA were: *BTW Strings Magnet, Montgomery – Chin Mei Li *Dunbar Magnet School Guitar Ensemble, Mobile – Felicia Lett *Tiger Strings Youth Orchestra, Sinfonia Strings, Auburn – Dr. Guy Harrison *Montgomery Music Project – Noemi Oeding Gadsden City High School Titan Orchestra – Keith LaBenne Dunbar Magnet School Orchestra, Mobile – Felicia Lett Tuscaloosa City Schools High School Orchestra – Stephen Finley Fairhope Quartet – Kim Shannon (*denotes straight ones received)

AOA will be holding OMPA again next year. Look for information on the particulars to come out this summer or early fall. We hope to see all groups return and hopefully more groups to take advantage of this opportunity. AOA’s OMPA is open to all Full Orchestras, String Orchestras, and Guitar ensembles. All State Orchestra 2016 was a huge success! The students and conductors did an AMAZING job! I am so proud of all the students and teachers of the students who participated this year. Competition to get in was high this year and it showed because you all were top notch! Thank you to all the parent volunteers and sectional coaches/judges who helped make this All State Orchestra great. We couldn’t have done it without you!

All State Orchestra 2017 will be February 9th through 12th and held at the University of Alabama Music Building. Music excerpts will be posted online on August 15th and auditions will be held the first two weeks of October. The 2017 Festival Orchestra conductor will be Dr. Sandra Dackow. Sandra is an active conductor, arranger, and clinician and is the music director of the Hershey Symphony Orchestra in Pennsylvania. Sinfonia Orchestra Conductor Dr. Foster Beyers is the Director of Orchestras at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN. He was recently appointed Director of Orchestral Activities at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA beginning in the 2016-2017 academic year. Consort String Orchestra Conductor Dr. Christina Yi-Ping Chen-Beyers currently serves as the Orchestra Director of the University Orchestra in Fargo-Moorhead, and was recently invited to lead the European Middle School Honors Orchestra in Berlin which is organized by AMIS (The Association of Music in International Schools). I hope your students will join us again for another amazing year of music!

AOA moved its 2017 composition contest deadline up to June 1, 2016. This competition is open to any composers who have written a piece for full orchestra between January 1, 2014 and the deadline. Submissions for this contest are received from around the world. The winning composition will be performed by the 2017 All State Festival Orchestra at All State in February. The composer will receive $1,500 and travel (from a point within the USA) and lodging expenses to attend the 2017 All State Festival as the Composer in Residence. For more information on this competition and for application forms, please visit www.alabamaorchestra association.org.

I am honored that I was elected to serve as President of AOA and I have enjoyed my two years in this office. It has been a joy to be on the planning side of All State and AMEA, two events in which I greatly benefited from as a high school student attending All State or as a college student and young professional attending the AMEA conferences. Serving in this capacity has given me a huge appreciation for all the people who make these functions happen each year. Thank you all for trusting me to do this job and giving me this opportunity to serve. I am very excited that we will have a stellar group of incoming officers to the AOA board. I know GREAT things are in store for our organization under the direction of these individuals. This is an exciting time in Alabama when Orchestra Education is growing. I am confident that this group of officers will enhance the opportunities for students around the state to participate in string education.

Your AOA Officers for 2016-2018 are: President: Samuel Nordlund President-Elect: Dr. Guy Harrison Secretary: Dr. Daniel Stevens Treasurer: Jacob Frank Immediate Past President: Sarah Schrader Executive Director: Julie Hornstein

UPCOMING DATES:
June 1, 2016: AOA Composition Contest Deadline
June 1, 2016: AMEA Session proposals and Ensemble Performance Applications due
August 15, 2016: All State Orchestra Excerpts posted
February 9-12, 2017: All State Orchestra Festival

Why do we need to make connections with others in our own area of expertise? Is it to form friendships, have someone to call on for a favor or help land a job? All of the above and more! Everyone knows this, so why am I writing about connections today? I want to show you how being active in AMEA and your smaller branch, AOA (or any others for that matter) can be a great way to make connections and help you accomplish your goals.

I recently moved from Auburn, where I was VERY involved in music education in the community and music at church to Baldwin County. We moved because my husband accepted a new job in the area. My family has strong ties to this area and it is THE BEACH, so we were excited to move, but it was hard for me to give up all that I did in Auburn, especially the teaching. I wanted to get involved in my new community teaching, but didn’t know exactly how to do that.

When thinking about how to get started, I remembered that I met and spoke many times to the director of the Baldwin County Youth Orchestras, Leroy Hughes, at AMEA Conferences. Luckily for me, he felt it important to take advantage of the AMEA conference offered to our members, so I met him and now I have a small connection to my new area. I then google searched the youth orchestra and found his contact e-mail to send him a note that I would be moving to the area and oh yeah, do you remember me? He did, and agreed to meet with me to help me figure out how I can start fitting in to my new community. It just so turned out that his organization received a grant to provide instruments and teachers for afterschool programs in elementary schools around Baldwin County this year. He was looking for teachers, and here I was ready to get involved. The timing worked out perfectly. I am now teaching two string classes at a local school and loving being in the classroom again. I know this doesn’t seem like much, but I only wanted to teach a little bit (which is a blessing that music education allows us), so I could fo
cus more time and energy on raising my precious 2 year old boy.

Without this connection I made through AMEA conferences I wouldn’t have been awarded the opportunity to be a part of something so amazing in Baldwin County. Thank you Mr. Hughes and other AMEA members for supporting our organization and making connections count! Connections you make with other AMEA members at our conference are not just to help with gaining employment, but also for friendships, favors, and help. I have been blessed to know so many people who are willing to help AOA when we are promoting activities, need advice, for friendships, and favors! My connections have been great this year in helping with favors needed to make our All State Orchestra Festival great! We rely on many people to help out with judging and sectionals to provide the best experience for the youth of Alabama and for your help I am very grateful. AMEA conferences are a breath of fresh air away from students. It is the best place to come and catch up with old college friends, colleagues, and meet new members. I am always so refreshed and energized to return to teaching after a conference. It is one of the highlights of my year!

I encourage each of you to attend the annual AMEA conference and if you know someone who hasn’t attended in a while or ever, bring them along. It is so important for us to make those connections that are vital to making our lives whole as music educators. For AOA, this year is one you do not want to miss. We will have the opportunity to meet world renowned composer Soon Hee Newbold! I hope to make connections with all of you at our AMEA conference in January!

As the new school year starts, we are all gearing up for the excitement that is sure to come. Here’s a quote to remind us how important our profession is.

“The back-to basics curricula, while it has merit, ignores the most urgent void in our present system- absence of self-discipline. The arts, inspiring— indeed requiring – self-discipline, may be more basic to our nation’s survival than traditional courses.” Paul Harvey

Wow! How amazing is it to be reminded that our classes are not just EXTRA, but essential to the survival or our nation. I hope this year you remember how important our roles are as music educators. Be inspired to be the best you can be so those essential character traits needed to keep our country great will be instilled in your students.

As this new school year begins, the AOA executive board is busily working to make this year of festivals and conferences amazing for our students and teachers. We are working on All State auditions, nailing down speakers for our AMEA in-service conference, and working out details for the first ever AOA Music Performance Assessment Festival.

All State Excerpts will be posted on our website www.alabamaorchestraassociation.org on August 10, 2015. All State Conductors and music will be as follows: Festival Orchestra: Peter Bay will conduct the Brahms Academic Festival Overture, Nielsen’s 3rd Symphony, Finale, and the AOA composition contest winner’s piece; Sinfonia Orchestra: Dr. David Pope will conduct March Militaire Francaise by Saint-Saens/arr. Isaac, Swan Lake Suite, Op. 20a: No. 1 Scene by Tchaikovsky, Millennium by Meyer, and Pines of Rome by Respighi/arr. Bulla ; Consort String Orchestra: Kirsten Marshall will conduct Coiled! by Lipton, Dance of the Harlequins, by Clark. Agincourt, by Spata, Deep River by Gruselle, and Final Quest, by Chisham. I am very excited about our lineup of music and conductors for this year’s Festival. I can’t wait to see all the students again in February and hear the amazing results at the concluding concert from your hours and hours of practice.

AOA will have an amazing line up of speakers at this year’s AMEA in-service conference. Mark your calendars for Januray 21-23, 2016 to make sure you are in attendance. We will be featuring sessions from nationally acclaimed composers Soon Hee Newbold and Brian Balmages. We will also have sessions from our Alabama ASTA President, Caroline Nordlund and two of our college string professors, Dr. Anne Witt and Dr. Daniel Stevens. Some of the session titles include: “The Frenzied Instrumental Conductor’s Guide to Score Preparation,” “Injury Prevention for the String Studio,” “Bow Games and Twinkle and Solfege, O My!,” “Classroom Management 201,” “ The Publishing Process,” and “Picking the Perfect Piece for Your Concert.” In addition to these wonderful sessions we will have the opportunity to hear the Shoals Symphony under the direction of Dr. Daniel Stevens perform. You don’t want to miss this conference!!!

I am excited to tell you about our new Orchestra Music Performance Festival that is set to happen on April 22 and 23, 2016. This Festival will be held at Auburn University. All details are still being worked out, but we are excited that this will take place this year. Details will be posted on our website as they become available. www.alabamaorchestraassociation.org I wish everyone an exciting year of music teaching and performing. I look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events!