RBBIC Blog

Thanks to everyone for their hard work in preparing this concert.  I hope that you enjoyed the pieces and that you came away with an encouraging concert performance.
I think the concert went well overall.  I was pleasantly surprised at several of the pieces, and quite happy that the hardest of the songs were some of our best playing on the night.  I think we accomplished a lot and should be proud of our product, yet also know that there are many things for us to keep working on.
Toccata for Band was a good opener, but I think it took us awhile to get into the swing of the piece.  Olympic Fanfare was one of our harder songs and it turned out well.  There was a good blend and balance through all the sections in the song and hats off to the band for tackling such a hard rhythm.  Philip Bliss is such a pretty song and I hope that through the CMP you were able to really gain a deeper understanding of the song.  I think that despite some of our tuning and balance issues there was a lot of emotion given in its performance.  Into the Storm is just a fun song, and you can here that in our playing.  First Suite is difficult, and at the same time it is one of those pieces that as a group we truly benefit from learning.  I hope that if you are able to go back and listen to our performance you can here the strong, and characteristic tones of all the solo instruments, the balance of voices, and blending of sections, and the challenging parts that we tackled.  The work and strength of our ensemble is within this piece.  I was most pleased with First Suite.
Nice job to everyone and I hope we can keep up the good work in rehearsals and the strong performances for our upcoming concerts.  All I’ve heard on the concert is positive comments and that comes from your strong playing and dedication to music making.

Congratulations!

I want to start by saying thank you for the hard work that we all put in this Marching Band season.  Even though we didn’t make finals on Saturday, I think we had one of our strongest performances.  I think we can be proud of what we accomplished this year, and I don’t want anyone to be discouraged by Saturday’s outcome.  Here are just a few stats to share the progress we made for this year.
First of all, our placement was 12th on the day, and out of 16 bands that’s much better than the results last year.  But to break things down a bit further, every caption went up from Mason’s Invitational.  In fact, we were able to add a total of 14 points between the two competitions.  We were only . 8 points away from breaking 60.  All categories were a high score for this season.  And this current year’s MSBA score is the highest RB has had since 2004, which was the last time RB competed in Class AA.  Our General Effect scores had the most increase through the year, and I’m still proud to say that we continued to score high in the Individual Music Performance category.  Our DrumLine, which has been winning throughout the year, finished 2nd out of the bands with marching lines. 
I think that there is a lot to be happy about from this Saturday’s contest.  But ignoring all of the scores, I hope that you UpperClassmen will be able to look back and call this past year one of the most succesfull and entertaining seasons of marching band in your high school career.  We had strong goals, and we put forth the effort and energy to achieve them.  Again, thanks to all for your hard work.

This puts us in the perfect place to continue to grow for next year.

First of all, sorry for the delay in posting.  A lot of what I was waiting for was the final scores from the competition which I did not get until today.  However, and as some of you have heard, we finished in 6th place in our class.  Unfortunately, they did not announce category awards (like percussion) by class, but on the day, so we did not collect any other trophies besides our class placement.  This was a challenging competition and I feel we had a strong performance in which we were able to work on several of the things from practice. 
We have only one competition ahead of us, so we need to make the most out of the rest of this season.  Good work, and good luck.
I would be interested in hearing any one’s reaction to our performance at Mason, feel free to comment or come talk to me after practice.

At the halfway point of the season, the Roger Bacon Band played a full day at both the Tyler’s Run event and the Tri-State Tournament of Champions at East Central High School, Indiana on Saturday, Oct 11, 2008. The band was awarded 2nd place in it’s class, and scored the highest in music performance again in its class, but no award was presented for this category. The Drumline was also awarded with “Best Percussion” continuing its high scores from the very first competition. Congrats band, and keep up the hard work.

The RB Band continued to show their community service by playing at the Tyler’s Run fund raising event on Saturday, Oct 11, 2008.  It was an early start getting to school at 7:30 AM, but that was only the beginning.  After playing at Tyler’s Run event, the band rested up at Miami Whitewater Park for a picnic lunch before heading on to St. Leon, IN for a band competition.