We are excited to announce that we are relaunching the Wind Conducting Symposium! We will gather again for this exciting professional development program on May 31-June 1 & 2 at Northern Valley Regional High School at Old Tappan. It’s been nine years since we convened in 2015 for our last conducting workshop. Through the efforts of many — including the executive boards of Music Educators of Bergen County, Inc. and the Westchester Symphonic Winds — we are pleased to offer this program again in 2024.

Clinicians will include Curt Ebersole from the Westchester Symphonic Winds and Dr. Robert Ambrose from Georgia State University. The program will be similar to past years, with some tweaks and streamlining to improve the experience for our conductors, auditors and lab ensemble performers.

Please visit the symposium website for all details and registration information. We hope to see you this spring!

Although there’s no conducting symposium this spring, I’m very excited to announce that the renowned Northshore Concert Band of Evanston, IL, conducted by Mallory Thompson, will be performing in our area next month. I’m thrilled to be sharing this concert with Mallory and Northshore! I’m writing to ask you to please share this news with your ensemble’s members, and encourage them to consider attending.

Mallory Thompson and I send everyone best wishes as we all start another academic season. Best of luck to everyone as you begin your rehearsals!

For many years now, the individuals who have registered as Conductors for our Symposium have mostly come from outside Bergen County — only 10-20% have been MEBCI members. And our Auditor registration, priced to be extremely accessible for MEBCI members, has been very low. This year we had only 10 Conductors for 12 spots (only 2 MEBCI members) and no Auditors at all. I’m thrilled that it has become a national destination for conductors seeking this type of workshop experience, but the original concept, to serve the music educators of Bergen County, is not producing the participation necessary to sustain it — at least not right now. In addition, it’s difficult to maintain a program that cannot financially support itself.

After considerable discussion about this with both Mallory and Allison Trott, MEBCI President, I’ve decided that we will not run this program in 2016. We’ll reassess the interest of our MEBCI membership and our state/national colleagues, and then consider skipping a year and possibly reinstating the program in 2017. This will afford an opportunity to step back and take a look at the workshop, and perhaps restructure it for the better in the future. I’ll continue to maintain this site and future announcements will be posted here. In the meantime, if you have any questions or concerns about this Symposium, please post a comment on this blog post or email me directly.

I’m wishing you all the best for your programs and concerts this coming year.
Curt

Happy Spring, everyone — so glad it’s finally here!

We need additional players on these instruments for the coming Symposium for both afternoon sessions, Saturday & Sunday, May 30-31:

• Flutes
• Oboes
• Trumpets
• Horns
• Trombones

If you are available, or can recommend our workshop to players on these instruments, please register at: http://wcs.ebernet.biz/registration/.

We also have room for one more conductor, and any number of auditors. Please consider playing if you have not done so yet, or spread the word to some players who might benefit from this experience.

If you registered as a Conductor, Auditor, or Performer, assume that we do need you to play, and plan to come to play on the day(s) for which you registered. I’ll send a summary email again about a week before the event.

Thanks.