“The Road to Carnegie Hall” Benefit Concert

Hi Everyone,
Here is the information for an upcoming concert here in St. Louis to benefit local music education. It looks like a good line up of musicians.


“The Road to Carnegie Hall” Benefit Concert

Tuesday, Dec. 22 7 p.m.
KHS Keating Center
Enjoy performances by musically gifted KHS orchestra alumni, including members of the St.
Louis Symphony Orchestra, during this wonderful night of music. Proceeds benefit the KHS
Symphonic Orchestraʼs trip to Carnegie Hall next Spring. Several district orchestra students
from the elementary, middle schools and high school, will also showcase their talent alongside
these former Pioneers:
* Cellist Patrice Jackson, media-proclaimed music prodigy and daughter of Symphonic
Orchestra Director Patrick Jackson;
* St. Louis Symphony Orchestra members Felicia Foland (bassoon) and Rebecca
Boyer Hall (violin);
* The Freivogel Family Strings - siblings Meg, Liz, Ben and J, will reunite for this one night;
* Emilee Newell, graduate of Indiana Universityʼs renowned music program; Sarah
Drake, a fourth year music major (violin) at Indiana;
* Joe Kaminsky, elementary strings teacher for the Kirkwood School District and
violin instructor for 30 years;
* There will also be a special performance by Kirkwood Orchestra
director Patrick Jackson!
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BUY YOUR TICKETS NOW!
Ticket prices include a dessert reception following the concert.
NAME: _________________
Phone: _________________ E-Mail: _________________________
Address: ___________________________________________
$20 for Adult Tickets
X No. of tickets ______
$________
TOTAL: $________
Open seating for all tickets. Please mail this form to: KHS Orchestra Benefit Concert, Kirkwood
School District, Attn: Carolyn Pierce, 11289 Manchester Rd., Kirkwood, MO 63122.
Make checks payable to KHS Orchestra Benefit Concert.
All tickets will be held at the Will Call table in the Keating Performance Center and may be picked
up the night of the concert.
Please call 966-5350 for more info!

Recitals and Fiddle

Hello all,
Next weekend we have some recitals going on and you are all welcome to come see the students play (regardless of if you are scheduled to play or not.) The students have been working hard to prepare their pieces, so it should be a great set of recitals. Saturday, December 12 at 11am will be our first recital and it will include a performance by our fiddle group. The fiddle group will be performing 6 fiddle tunes including, Celtic, Bluegrass, Old-time, and Klesmer tunes.

The next recital will be Saturday, December 12 at 2pm, and our last recital will be Sunday, December 13 at 1:30pm. After all of our recitals we'll have goodies to eat and would love the chance to visit with you, so feel free to stay. We hope you have a great week and hope to see you at the recitals!

Toy room at St. Timothy's

The secretary at St. Timothy's church has asked me to remind everyone who comes in for group classes, fiddle, and recitals to be sure to put things away in the children's room upstairs if their kids go and play in there. They've had a few Sundays now where the toys have been left out after we've been there.

Let's keep things nice and neat so the church will continue to enjoy having us use their faciltiy. Thanks!

Fiddle Rehearsal Saturday

Hi Everyone,

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

We'll be meeting for our dress rehearsal this Saturday, December 5th at 2:30pm. We are anticipating that the rehearsal will be approximately one hour. We'll be at St. Timothy's as usual. Since this is our last rehearsal and we have a lot to do to get ready for the recital, we need to have everyone there. Thanks everyone for making such a commitment to fiddling!

A few notes for practice speeds this week:

Sally Gardens - practice with metronome at around 70=quarter note

Back Up and Push - practice second half (cross shuffle) with metronome set at around 104=quarter note

Johnny's Gone to France - Slow tempo practice with metronome at around 92= quarter note. The second time through will be twice as fast for everyone who can play it really fast, so the tempo will be 92=half note. (You'll fit 4 eighth notes into each beat instead of two.) For those of you who still would like to count quarter notes, the metronome marking will be 184=quarternote.

Other notes on practicing this week:

King of the Faeries - please look over your notes and bowings this week. There are a few memory lapses and intonation issues happening that hopefully will be mostly sorted out before we meet on Saturday. We'll get the ending worked out Saturday too so be sure to practice that!

Sally Gardens - please be sure to count on all half and dotted half notes. We're still not quite all together sometimes. In the group, if you are not sure, just watch Maggie's bow and don't change before she does.

Back Up and Push - besides metronome practice to keep our speed steady, please check bowings this week and watch that Fs and Cs are not too flat.

Orientalische - Great job off beat people!! Melody guys, let's check bowings and make sure we're playing the second half in tune; there are some sour notes in there at times.

Thanks guys and happy practicing!!

Thanksgiving Break

Next week we'll have Thanksgiving break from Monday (23nd) through Saturday (28th), so there will not be any lessons. Some of us may be doing make up lessons during that time, so check with your teacher to see if she is planning to see you for a make up during the break. Otherwise, have a great break! Don't forget to do lots of practicing. Our last set of recitals is coming up really soon!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Group and Fiddle this Saturday (Nov 21)

Hi Everyone,
We'll have our last fiddle class this Saturday at 2:30pm at St. Timothy's again. Students who will be performing Back Up and Push need to arrive at 2:15.

We'll be working on all the tunes. After this class, we just have our dress rehearsal on December 5th, so we need everyone there this Saturday to get it all pulled together for the concert.

Suzuki groups 3 and 4 will be meeting this Saturday from 3:30 to 4:15pm at St. Timothy's. We'll have treats/snacks available after class. This will be the last group class till February. Hope to see you all there!

Fiddle Assignment

First of all,
Thanks to everyone in Suzuki group 1 for being so flexible this past week. The church had a mixup with their scheduling so we didn't have the (much larger) room we were supposed to have. Thanks for being patient and good sports about being in such a small room!

Fiddlers, here's your assignment for this week:

• Fire on the Mountain: Soloists, please practice with a metronome so we can keep the tempos steady as we switch from solo to solo. Your target tempo is between 140 and 150 for a quarter note beat. Don't forget to play out. We want to hear how good you sound!
• Orientalische Melody: Those of you playing the melody, please work on your intonation. Those low ones are still a bit icky. Continue to practice shifting too. Let's plan to play it a bit faster as long as the offbeat part can be played fast enough.
• Offbeats!!! Practice them in your lessons!!!! We need to get them much more steady. Try them at home too. Parents you can clap the downbeat while kids play the offbeat.
• Johnny's Gone to France: Sounding great! Let's get it just a bit faster for our final tempo. Remember we decided we'll play it 2 times through for the performance
• Sally Gardens: Practice line 3 for good counting on the half notes and dotted half notes.
• The King of the Faeries: Practice the second half for memorization. Be sure to be playing all the right notes and slurs! We will work on getting it more in tune at the next class too. Those of you doing the ending, please practice this in lessons this week to get the timing right.
• Back Up and Push: We didn't get to this Saturday, so please do lots of intonation practice on the second half as well as rhythm practice in the first half. (Subdivide if needed for rhythm.) For intonation, watch the Fs and Cs. (The low 2s.) Most of the time for most people they are extremely flat.

Students playing Back up and Push, could you come 15 minutes early to the next fiddle class? We will start at 2:15 on Back Up and Push.

Thanks!