Hello Orchestra families!
I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe summer break. If you are currently registered for Orchestra and Guitar, you should have received a welcome email from me by now. If you have not received it yet, it will be resent next week once all students have been registered for classes. Please read through the Orchestra Handbook found on the documents page. This has been updated since last year with new information for our current school year. Some important things:
We will be holding our first Parent Meeting on August 19th at 6:00pm both at the Murchison Orchestra room and over Zoom. Parent, please try to attend to get information about the orchestra program and how you can help support your child this year. I am looking forward to a fun filled musical year at Murchison. Can’t wait to see everyone on Monday. Musically your, Mr. Clinton It is hard to believe, but our first round of concerts are fast approaching! This week, students will be sent home with a flyer that has information about our concerts next week (Orchestra students only). A separate email will be sent as well with the same flyer, in case it does not make its way home.
I am still looking for a few more volunteers to help out with either the Spring Fest Trip (Thursday, November 4th - Beginner students only) and with set-up and break-down for the Fall Concert (Wednesday, November 3rd - Concert, Philharmonic, and Symphonic students only). If you are interested, please send me an email and let me know. Thank you for the help! Another reminder that this is the last week for our Living Tree Fundraiser. We have raised over $3,500 so far of our $10,000 goal. The more we can raise, the more private lessons scholarships we can provide for students. Please help send out those emails to friends and family. If you need the link to the donation page, please click here: https://give.livingtree.com/c/murchison-middles-school-orchestra-no-hassle-fundraiser Finally, please make sure your child is turning in their playing tests on Friday. Several students did not turn in their video this weekend. Grades have been updated in both Blend and Teams. The grade books match, so this should help with any confusion on what grades are in the class. Thank you , Mr. Clinton Hello everyone!
I hope that you all have had a wonderful summer break and are ready to return to school and make some music! I am sure many of you have questions about the first few weeks of school and what to expect from both school and orchestra. Everyone who is currently registered for orchestra will be receiving an email this week with a great deal of information about the next several weeks. Here are a few quick bits of important information and dates to keep in mind that you will see in the email: Parent Information Meetings - This will be a time to meet other parents in the orchestra and to learn more about what to expect this year from the Murchison Orchestra program.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me at: [email protected] Thanks, Brandon Clinton Hello everyone!
We are fast approaching the end of the school year! As most of you already know, it is STAAR testing week! We also have a few other events coming up in the orchestra world to put on your calendar, if they are not there already. Wednesday, May 12th from 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm- After school rehearsal for Symphonic and Philharmonic Orchestras - The rehearsal is for students participating in the in-person outdoor concert. Tuesday, May 18 from 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm - Second after school rehearsal for Symphonic and Philharmonic Orchestras - The rehearsal is for students participating in the in-person outdoor concert. Wednesday, May 19 - 6:30 pm - In-person Out Door Concert! Call time: 5:30 pm - Student can come to the orchestra room to drop off their cases and then we will head to the front of the school for the concert. What to wear - Students should wear their virtual orchestra shirt (dark blue) with pants and shoes for the concert Concert begins at 6:30 pm Tuesday, May 25 - Virtual Student Recital (over Zoom) - 6:30 pm - We will have a virtual recital for students to present their solo and ensemble piece that they have been working on. The recital will be held over Zoom so students can perform live. A Zoom link will be sent out to participants as we get closer to the recital date. Just a quick reminder to everyone that we are having another opportunity to pick-up Orchestra t-shirts from the school if you have not gotten your yet. This is a free shirt from the orchestra program. You can pick-up the shirt on April 6th from 4pm - 6pm at the circle drive off of Hart lane.
Hello everyone!
We hope that you had a wonderful and restful spring break. We are in our final stretch for the school year. We have a few exciting bits of news for this final semester, see below for details:
Hello everyone,
We hope that this message reachers everyone safe and sound after the crazy winter storm we all experienced last week. What a school year it has been, dealing with a pandemic and a historic winter storm. We have a few updates that we wanted to send out to everyone about orchestra:
Hello everyone!
Happy February! A few updates from the orchestra program. This Tuesday is the Murchison Middle School Choice Sheet Night from 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm. If you are not familiar with what this is, it is a time to check out all of the various programs at Murchison so students can choose their elective courses. This year the event will be held over Zoom. A link should have been sent out by the school already for the incoming 5th graders and the current 6th and 7th grade students. If you have not gotten a link for this yet, please let us know and we can help get it to you. We would also like to announce that we are having a meet the orchestra director night next Monday, February 8th, 2021 from 6 pm - 7 pm. If you know students who are interested in joining orchestra, please help get the word out. Hello everyone and Happy New Year!
We hope that everyone had a restful and relaxing break. We apologize for the lack of updates to this news page but we have several updates and events to make you ware of! Region updates: Congratulations to all the students that auditioned for Region this year. We had three students who successfully made it into the Region ensemble! They are: Milo, Celia, and Brynna. Way to go! Winter Concert: We have several people asking about our winter concert video. We are still working on the final edit of the video!We are hoping to have it released this week. Thank you for your patience! Spring Concert (March )and End of the Year Concert (May): We are planning the release of the Spring Concert for the end of March. We are still planning on the release date for the End of the Year Concert. Please check back here for updates. Movie Night: We will be having a movie night this Friday, January 22, 2021 on Zoom from 6pm - 8pm. We are still deciding on what movie to show. Any student is welcome to attend and can have popcorn ready to enjoy the film. Solo and Ensemble: We are passing out music for solo and ensemble this week for Concert, Philharmonic, and Symphonic students. Our solo and ensemble virtual recital will be held in April! The date is still TBD. All students are required to prepare a solo or ensemble and perform on the recital. This is a major project grade for the year. Those students that have private teacher are more than welcome to use their solo that they are working on, please let us know what the piece is. Students who are uncomfortable performing a solo will be encouraged to perform a duet for this event. We will be using Up Beat Performance for this event. Feel free to check out this website. More to come in class. Grades and Assignments: Just a reminder to all students in orchestra and guitar that we will have a playing test or pass-off every week. We are having tests in class and students are being given time to practice in class on class days as well. If a students is unable to perform the music, has technical issues (camera or mic problems), or is absent then they have the opportunity to turn the test into BLEND at any time. Also, please remember that students have the opportunity to turn in an assignment up until the last week of the semester for full credit. Please remind your child to get their work turned in! We will also be sending out emails to parents this semester more frequently about grades. Cameras: The district is strongly encouraging students to have cameras on in class! This is part of their participation grade! It is so important for us as teachers to be able to help students learn and correct any issues that they might have on their instruments. If your child is having technical problems with their camera or mic, we are asking that either the student or their parents/guardian send us a message on Zoom or send an email letting us know that they are having problems. If we receive communication, we will not take points off of their grade. We will try to be very understanding with everyone's current situation but communication will help greatly. Exciting news everyone! We have officially started our first fundraiser of the year! This year we are excited to be selling Swag for the orchestra. We have t-shirts, hoodies, masks, and more. You can get a shirt for yourself, your family, a friend, or get one as a gift for this holiday season! Check out the flyer below to see what you might like and follow the link below to check out the store page to make a purchase. We will be selling items from November 9th - November 22nd.
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