Hi guys,
This announcement only goes out to the new members of MSSB, Sec 1s. This is to inform all sec 1s that there will be band practice starting at 1430 pm tomorrow. Please do not be late or punishments will have to be meted out.
Anyway, this is to add on to the main band members that today's attendence is very BAD! Please! If you all want your gold with honours, then better start working hard. If this doesnt improve, then forget about you honours, lest a gold!
Jia You all for SYF! Its 8 days left!
James
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Hi guys,
This is a gentle reminder that there will band practice tmr at 230. Please do come. You are only excused if there are lessons. Everyone is expected to come after your lessons, even if it ends at 5. All must be present.
Also, please do spread to the other members that everyone should bring their pe attire tmr. We will be doing something, and it will not be physical activity or whatsoever. It will be something else.
Anyway, thats all for now...
James
All the best to MSSB for SYF!
This is a gentle reminder that there will band practice tmr at 230. Please do come. You are only excused if there are lessons. Everyone is expected to come after your lessons, even if it ends at 5. All must be present.
Also, please do spread to the other members that everyone should bring their pe attire tmr. We will be doing something, and it will not be physical activity or whatsoever. It will be something else.
Anyway, thats all for now...
James
All the best to MSSB for SYF!
Speech
Hi guys..
This is a speech that Mr Chiang wants me to post on the blog. Its a little long but do bear with it, and read carefully!
What follows is long, a welcoming address to new students at Boston Conservatory of Music last fall. I don't think there's any question that there's a massive shift going on in he arts in the U.S. and probably world-wide, although the culture in Europe, Asia, parts of Latin America and Australia still appears to include far more of the so called high arts in the consciousness of the general population than here.
Certainly, cutting arts classes out of the curricula of so many thousands of schools across the country has has had a devastating effect on the development of new audiences and has also led to the false and destructive myth that the arts are somehow "elitist" and not something that good, right-thinking American kids should be interested in. The welcoming speaker in the welcoming talk (sent to me by a colleague) addresses this particular issue.
As musicians, we believe deeply in the importance of what we do, and the power of music to heal. We know that you do also, as a fan of classical music, so the following may be of interest to you. It is a welcome address given to entering freshmen at the Boston Conservatory, given by Karl Paulnack [who has been addressing groups all of the the country with variations on this message], pianist and director of the music division:
Welcome Address, by Karl Paulnack
"One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society wouldnot properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. Ihad very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math,and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or anengineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. Istill remember my mother's remark when I announced my decision toapply to music school—she said, "you're WASTING your SAT scores." On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what thevalue of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, theylistened to classical music all the time. They just weren't really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit,because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts andentertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kindyour kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever todo with entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment. Letme talk a little bit about music, and how it works.
The first people to understand how music really works were the ancientGreeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that musicand astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen asthe study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships betweeninvisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helpingus figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered thewar against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in aconcentration camp.
He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paperand a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp,a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote hisquartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed inJanuary 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prisoncamp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in therepertoire.
Given what we have since learned about life in the concentrationcamps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energywriting or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good dayto find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escapetorture—why would anyone bother with music? And yet—from the camps, wehave poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn't just thisone fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in aplace where people are only focused on survival, on the barenecessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow,essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope,without commerce, without rec reation, without basic respect, but theywere not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of thehuman spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one ofthe ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."
On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to theworld. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice aswas my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinkingabout it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I satthere and thought, does this even matter? Isn't this completelyirrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.
And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journeyof getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, andin fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play thepiano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.
At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble.We didn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn'tshop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organizedactivity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. Peoplesang. People sang around fire houses, people sang "We Shall Overcome".Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized publicevent that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, atLincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organizedpublic expression of grief, our first communal response to thathistoric event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense thatlife might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recoverywas led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.
From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music isnot part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section wouldhave us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund fromleftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a passtime. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of theways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we expressfeelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things withour hearts when we cannot with our minds.
Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heartwrenchingly beautiful pieceAdagio for Strings. If you don't know it by that name, then some ofyou may know it as the background music which accompanied the OliverStone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know thatpiece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack yourheart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn'tknow you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get atwhat's really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.
I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutelyno music. There might have been only a little music, there might havebeen some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. Andsomething very predictable happens at weddings—people get all pent upwith all kinds of emotions, and then there's some musical moment wherethe action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the fluteor something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn'tgood, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cryat a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? TheGreeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces ofourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what wefeel even when we can't talk about it. Can you imagine watchingIndiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music?What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ETso that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly thesame moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the musicstripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks: Music is theunderstanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.
I'll give you one more example, the story of the most importantconcert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than athousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that Ithought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyedplaying in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St.Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; musiccritics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The mostimportant concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home inFargo, ND, about 4 years ago.
I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. Webegan, as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was writtenduring World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, ayoung pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to ouraudiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providingthem with written program notes. But in this case, because we beganthe concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece laterin the program and to just come out and play the music withoutexplanation.
Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair nearthe front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I latermet, was clearly a soldier—even in his 70's, it was clear from hisbuzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent agood deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit oddthat someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement ofthat particular piece, but it wasn't the first time I've heard cryingin a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.
When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided totalk about both the first and second pieces, and we described thecircumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned itsdedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audiencebecame so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestlyfigured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstageafterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.
What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and Iwas in an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes washit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, butthe Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunnedacross the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from thepilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizingthat he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, butduring that first piece of music you played, this memory returned tome so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn'tunderstand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came outto explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lostpilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music dothat? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?"
Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationshipsbetween internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most importantwork I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and helphim connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect theirmemories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn hisfriend, this is my work. This is why music matters.
What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshmanclass when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility Iwill charge your sons and daughters with is this:
"If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med studentpracticing appendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously becauseyou would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltzinto your emergency room and you're going to have to save their life.Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into yourconcert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that isoverwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole againwill depend partly on how well you do your craft.
You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sellyourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being amusician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies.I'm not an entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, afirefighter, a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort oftherapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor,physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if theyget things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony withourselves and be healthy and happy and well.
Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music;I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellnesson this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutualunderstanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will comefrom a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer evenexpect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seemto have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is afuture of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding ofhow these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect itwill come from the artists, because that's what we do. As in theconcentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the oneswho might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives."
This is a speech that Mr Chiang wants me to post on the blog. Its a little long but do bear with it, and read carefully!
What follows is long, a welcoming address to new students at Boston Conservatory of Music last fall. I don't think there's any question that there's a massive shift going on in he arts in the U.S. and probably world-wide, although the culture in Europe, Asia, parts of Latin America and Australia still appears to include far more of the so called high arts in the consciousness of the general population than here.
Certainly, cutting arts classes out of the curricula of so many thousands of schools across the country has has had a devastating effect on the development of new audiences and has also led to the false and destructive myth that the arts are somehow "elitist" and not something that good, right-thinking American kids should be interested in. The welcoming speaker in the welcoming talk (sent to me by a colleague) addresses this particular issue.
As musicians, we believe deeply in the importance of what we do, and the power of music to heal. We know that you do also, as a fan of classical music, so the following may be of interest to you. It is a welcome address given to entering freshmen at the Boston Conservatory, given by Karl Paulnack [who has been addressing groups all of the the country with variations on this message], pianist and director of the music division:
Welcome Address, by Karl Paulnack
"One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society wouldnot properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. Ihad very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math,and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or anengineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. Istill remember my mother's remark when I announced my decision toapply to music school—she said, "you're WASTING your SAT scores." On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what thevalue of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, theylistened to classical music all the time. They just weren't really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit,because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts andentertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kindyour kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever todo with entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment. Letme talk a little bit about music, and how it works.
The first people to understand how music really works were the ancientGreeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that musicand astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen asthe study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships betweeninvisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helpingus figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered thewar against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in aconcentration camp.
He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paperand a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp,a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote hisquartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed inJanuary 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prisoncamp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in therepertoire.
Given what we have since learned about life in the concentrationcamps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energywriting or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good dayto find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escapetorture—why would anyone bother with music? And yet—from the camps, wehave poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn't just thisone fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in aplace where people are only focused on survival, on the barenecessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow,essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope,without commerce, without rec reation, without basic respect, but theywere not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of thehuman spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one ofthe ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."
On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to theworld. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice aswas my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinkingabout it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I satthere and thought, does this even matter? Isn't this completelyirrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.
And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journeyof getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, andin fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play thepiano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.
At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble.We didn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn'tshop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organizedactivity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. Peoplesang. People sang around fire houses, people sang "We Shall Overcome".Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized publicevent that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, atLincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organizedpublic expression of grief, our first communal response to thathistoric event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense thatlife might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recoverywas led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.
From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music isnot part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section wouldhave us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund fromleftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a passtime. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of theways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we expressfeelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things withour hearts when we cannot with our minds.
Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heartwrenchingly beautiful pieceAdagio for Strings. If you don't know it by that name, then some ofyou may know it as the background music which accompanied the OliverStone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know thatpiece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack yourheart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn'tknow you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get atwhat's really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.
I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutelyno music. There might have been only a little music, there might havebeen some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. Andsomething very predictable happens at weddings—people get all pent upwith all kinds of emotions, and then there's some musical moment wherethe action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the fluteor something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn'tgood, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cryat a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? TheGreeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces ofourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what wefeel even when we can't talk about it. Can you imagine watchingIndiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music?What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ETso that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly thesame moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the musicstripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks: Music is theunderstanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.
I'll give you one more example, the story of the most importantconcert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than athousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that Ithought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyedplaying in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St.Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; musiccritics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The mostimportant concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home inFargo, ND, about 4 years ago.
I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. Webegan, as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was writtenduring World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, ayoung pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to ouraudiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providingthem with written program notes. But in this case, because we beganthe concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece laterin the program and to just come out and play the music withoutexplanation.
Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair nearthe front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I latermet, was clearly a soldier—even in his 70's, it was clear from hisbuzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent agood deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit oddthat someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement ofthat particular piece, but it wasn't the first time I've heard cryingin a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.
When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided totalk about both the first and second pieces, and we described thecircumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned itsdedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audiencebecame so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestlyfigured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstageafterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.
What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and Iwas in an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes washit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, butthe Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunnedacross the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from thepilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizingthat he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, butduring that first piece of music you played, this memory returned tome so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn'tunderstand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came outto explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lostpilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music dothat? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?"
Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationshipsbetween internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most importantwork I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and helphim connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect theirmemories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn hisfriend, this is my work. This is why music matters.
What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshmanclass when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility Iwill charge your sons and daughters with is this:
"If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med studentpracticing appendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously becauseyou would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltzinto your emergency room and you're going to have to save their life.Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into yourconcert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that isoverwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole againwill depend partly on how well you do your craft.
You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sellyourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being amusician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies.I'm not an entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, afirefighter, a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort oftherapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor,physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if theyget things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony withourselves and be healthy and happy and well.
Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music;I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellnesson this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutualunderstanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will comefrom a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer evenexpect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seemto have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is afuture of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding ofhow these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect itwill come from the artists, because that's what we do. As in theconcentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the oneswho might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives."
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Assembly performance
Please take note that
Main band will be performing for both sessions of assembly on Monday (23rd March 2009).
Please spread the message.
Thanks
Fredy
Main band will be performing for both sessions of assembly on Monday (23rd March 2009).
Please spread the message.
Thanks
Fredy
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Attire for March Holidays
Hi guys,
This post is regarding the attire to be worn on the full day practices on Monday to Wednesday.
It is as follows:
Monday - Orange
Tuesday - Black
Wednesday - blue
*Pants can be PE or School whitepants
Lastly, for the exchange with AMK on Saturday, 21 March, please wear your school white pants and black polo T-shirt. Thanks.
Ganbatte MSSB for SYF!
James
This post is regarding the attire to be worn on the full day practices on Monday to Wednesday.
It is as follows:
Monday - Orange
Tuesday - Black
Wednesday - blue
*Pants can be PE or School whitepants
Lastly, for the exchange with AMK on Saturday, 21 March, please wear your school white pants and black polo T-shirt. Thanks.
Ganbatte MSSB for SYF!
James
Thursday, March 12, 2009
URGENT! Make sure this info gets to EVERYONE!
Due to the HFMD outbreak and increase in number of people contracting it.
EVERYONE WILL BE GIVEN A PIECE OF NEWSPAPER EACH. EVERYONE IS TO EMPTY THE SALIVA ON THE NEWSPAPER AND DISPOSE THE NEWSPAPER OWNSELF AFTER PRACTICE.
I don't care you are a woodwind player or a brass player. NOBODY IS TO SHARE SALIVA DISH OR CONTAINER!
This will take effect from Friday 13th March 2009 Practice.
---------
Those members that has ANY of the following symptoms,
+ fever,
+ headache,
+ sore throat,
+ loss of appetite,
+ lack of energy,
+ small, painful ulcers in the mouth,
+ a skin rash that looks like red spots, often with small blisters on top, that appears on the hands and feet and sometimes other places on the body.
Please inform teachers, me or any EXCO members IMMEDIATELY!
Thanks!
Fredy
EVERYONE WILL BE GIVEN A PIECE OF NEWSPAPER EACH. EVERYONE IS TO EMPTY THE SALIVA ON THE NEWSPAPER AND DISPOSE THE NEWSPAPER OWNSELF AFTER PRACTICE.
I don't care you are a woodwind player or a brass player. NOBODY IS TO SHARE SALIVA DISH OR CONTAINER!
This will take effect from Friday 13th March 2009 Practice.
---------
Those members that has ANY of the following symptoms,
+ fever,
+ headache,
+ sore throat,
+ loss of appetite,
+ lack of energy,
+ small, painful ulcers in the mouth,
+ a skin rash that looks like red spots, often with small blisters on top, that appears on the hands and feet and sometimes other places on the body.
Please inform teachers, me or any EXCO members IMMEDIATELY!
Thanks!
Fredy
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
HYGIENE + HFMD
Due to the recent outbreak of HFMD cases in MSHS.
We URGED everyone in the band to take note of personal hygiene and of course the band room hygiene.
I am warning everyone in the Band NOT TO EMPTY saliva on the floor. Please empty them at your respective saliva dishes.
We seriously do not hope anyone in the band to be contracted with HFMD, especially during this crucial period.
Everyone...
PLEASE WASH YOUR HANDS / SANITIZE YOUR HANDS AFTER YOU HAVE WASHED YOUR MOUTHPIECE/SALIVA DISHES.
PLEASE MAKE SURE EVERYONE CLEAN THEIR INSTRUMENT THOROUGHLY. MAKE SURE THERE IS NO SALIVA LEFTOVER OR WHATSOEVER IN THE INSTRUMENT.
--
We will do up a schedule for respective session to mop the band room after band practice. Percussion has mopped and cleaned up the area today. So starting from the next practice. All sections will take turn to clean up the band room.
I hope EVERYONE cooperates with us so as to minimize any possible chance of getting HFMD. We are doing whatever precaution we can, so YOU as part of the band, MUST play your part too.
---
One more thing, THOSE who has fever or similar symptoms as HFMD, please inform the teachers or Mr Chiang or me or any of the EXCO.
Please take care of yourself for these 27 days.
Fredy
We URGED everyone in the band to take note of personal hygiene and of course the band room hygiene.
I am warning everyone in the Band NOT TO EMPTY saliva on the floor. Please empty them at your respective saliva dishes.
We seriously do not hope anyone in the band to be contracted with HFMD, especially during this crucial period.
Everyone...
PLEASE WASH YOUR HANDS / SANITIZE YOUR HANDS AFTER YOU HAVE WASHED YOUR MOUTHPIECE/SALIVA DISHES.
PLEASE MAKE SURE EVERYONE CLEAN THEIR INSTRUMENT THOROUGHLY. MAKE SURE THERE IS NO SALIVA LEFTOVER OR WHATSOEVER IN THE INSTRUMENT.
--
We will do up a schedule for respective session to mop the band room after band practice. Percussion has mopped and cleaned up the area today. So starting from the next practice. All sections will take turn to clean up the band room.
I hope EVERYONE cooperates with us so as to minimize any possible chance of getting HFMD. We are doing whatever precaution we can, so YOU as part of the band, MUST play your part too.
---
One more thing, THOSE who has fever or similar symptoms as HFMD, please inform the teachers or Mr Chiang or me or any of the EXCO.
Please take care of yourself for these 27 days.
Fredy
Monday, March 09, 2009
Audition for those who failed
Please take note that the Audition will be moved to
WEDNESDAY (11th March 2009).
Those who failed the previous audition (58 and below) will need to for this audition.
For those who failed this upcoming Wednesday audition, they will NOT be allowed to join in for FULL BAND anymore. They will be asked to do self practise outside from then on. They will ONLY be allowed to join back for FULL BAND when they proved themselves to be able to play their parts well with MINIMAL problems.
Auditioner for this Audition will be Mr Chiang.
For those who failed the previous audition. Good Luck!
Fredy
WEDNESDAY (11th March 2009).
Those who failed the previous audition (58 and below) will need to for this audition.
For those who failed this upcoming Wednesday audition, they will NOT be allowed to join in for FULL BAND anymore. They will be asked to do self practise outside from then on. They will ONLY be allowed to join back for FULL BAND when they proved themselves to be able to play their parts well with MINIMAL problems.
Auditioner for this Audition will be Mr Chiang.
For those who failed the previous audition. Good Luck!
Fredy
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Maris Stella Symphonic Band Achievements
I have added the achievements for MSSB for SYF since 2001.
Please take note we are a bronze band since don't know when till 2001.
After having Mr Lin (our music director) in the later part of 2002, the band improved tremendously and achieved Silver Award in 2003 (there was no GwH back then, Gold award score was much higher back then). Then in 2005, the band improved and achieved the Gold award after the very First gold Maristband has achieved almost 40 years ago.
The band welcomes Mr Chiang (our conductor) to the family of Maristbands in late 2005. As part of the Alumni of MSHS, he brought the band to another Gold award in SYF 2007.
This year 2009.
The Singapore Youth Festival 2009 Central Judging (Concert Band). What will we achieve?
Will we be sustaining the Gold Award? or Will we be achieving a much better award, Gold with Honours.
EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON ALL OF YOU.
We have worked hard for the past 3 months
and now...
31 days left.
Bear with us, and work hard. just these 31 more days.
Let me tell you, ALL the Alumni Band members are very concerned about you all. VERY CONCERNED. As some of you may know, the Alumni Band has achieved some good results over the years, we do hope Main Band can continue in getting good results for SYF and do us proud. MSSBA has done it. Now it is MSSB turn.
No matter what you all get, MSSBA will be behind and support this Main Band. Afterall, all of us are from one band, the Maristband.
So let's practise a little harder and achieve what we are targeting on. Be it Gold or Gold with Honours. Let's just work towards it.
So I hope everyone will buck up and practise a little harder than normal. Nobody likes to scold all of you (I personally dislike doing that), all you need to do is just practise your part and make sure you all do whatever we tell you all to do. I am sure you won't get scolding if you did all those.
I like the 2 lines that your DMs has told me today. Both said almost the same stuffs. I wonder how many people do think like them. I am 100% agreeing to the both of them. 100% cause that's what I told myself when I went for Competitions with MSSBA.
"I want to go on stage and play and walk off the stage without any regrets." ~Joshua~
"Put in 100% hardwork, perserverance and all and play to your best without regretting" ~James~
Enjoy and cherish the remaining 31 days of practices with everyone in this band. After this, the band will not be the same anymore.
Fredy
~Everything lies in you, you choose, you do it, you finish it without any regrets. MSSB is made up by you, and you create "MSSB"~
Please take note we are a bronze band since don't know when till 2001.
After having Mr Lin (our music director) in the later part of 2002, the band improved tremendously and achieved Silver Award in 2003 (there was no GwH back then, Gold award score was much higher back then). Then in 2005, the band improved and achieved the Gold award after the very First gold Maristband has achieved almost 40 years ago.
The band welcomes Mr Chiang (our conductor) to the family of Maristbands in late 2005. As part of the Alumni of MSHS, he brought the band to another Gold award in SYF 2007.
This year 2009.
The Singapore Youth Festival 2009 Central Judging (Concert Band). What will we achieve?
Will we be sustaining the Gold Award? or Will we be achieving a much better award, Gold with Honours.
EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON ALL OF YOU.
We have worked hard for the past 3 months
and now...
31 days left.
Bear with us, and work hard. just these 31 more days.
Let me tell you, ALL the Alumni Band members are very concerned about you all. VERY CONCERNED. As some of you may know, the Alumni Band has achieved some good results over the years, we do hope Main Band can continue in getting good results for SYF and do us proud. MSSBA has done it. Now it is MSSB turn.
No matter what you all get, MSSBA will be behind and support this Main Band. Afterall, all of us are from one band, the Maristband.
So let's practise a little harder and achieve what we are targeting on. Be it Gold or Gold with Honours. Let's just work towards it.
So I hope everyone will buck up and practise a little harder than normal. Nobody likes to scold all of you (I personally dislike doing that), all you need to do is just practise your part and make sure you all do whatever we tell you all to do. I am sure you won't get scolding if you did all those.
I like the 2 lines that your DMs has told me today. Both said almost the same stuffs. I wonder how many people do think like them. I am 100% agreeing to the both of them. 100% cause that's what I told myself when I went for Competitions with MSSBA.
"I want to go on stage and play and walk off the stage without any regrets." ~Joshua~
"Put in 100% hardwork, perserverance and all and play to your best without regretting" ~James~
Enjoy and cherish the remaining 31 days of practices with everyone in this band. After this, the band will not be the same anymore.
Fredy
~Everything lies in you, you choose, you do it, you finish it without any regrets. MSSB is made up by you, and you create "MSSB"~
Friday, March 06, 2009
Some comments I want to make, or even a reflection.
Hey Marists, this is Seung Hwa. I just want to tell you all about my opinion for our band and SYF.
I realised that the members are not improving much, maybe it's because of not practicing, not being serious or practicing wrong stuffs. Therefore, I want to beg you please, please make some time for practicing your own instruments.
A simple practice can be very effective, such as playing long notes. (seems like I am repeating the same thing as MrChiang, Fredy and all other alumnis...)
Just spend at least 1 hour on simple exercise. It will help you a lot.
Second point, let me tell you SYF is not just a national schools' competition. It is much more complicated than that. For those who think that participating in SYF will give you CCA points, it is time to change your thinking concept. Like what Fredy and Mr Chiang said, SYF will change your destiny a lot.
Here is an example, I am very sure that there are band members who wants to enter JC via DSA, but think carefully. If you were a conductor of a JC band, would you choose a player who is in a "Gold with Honours" band or a "Silver" band? Some of you may think that such award would not change much of the "musical quality" of that player. You are wrong. It is a matter of psychology. Seriously, a player who plays fantastic in a "Silver" band may not sound as good. It is because conductors will focus more on the bad qualities, which is to say find him/her hopeless.
Third point, the Sec 4 seniors are practicing as hard as possible in order to sustain the achievement from the previous years. Yes, they have more experience than you all but some juniors (Sec 1 to 3s) are already playing as good as them. Why can't you? Seriously, it is a matter of practice. Please do not waste the effort the Sec 4s have made. They are sacrificing the most time. They have GCE 'O' Level, for god's sake. Many alumnis who practiced a lot during their days went to good JCs, including RJC, VJC and NJC. Don't think that practicing instruments will affect your studies. The factor that affects your studies is ONLINE GAMES, seriously. What can online games help you in your exams? There's nothing much.
If our band cannot clinch the "Gold" award this year, I'll say that the Sec 4s are the ones who deserve to be punished the most. Why? Think for yourself. Hence, don't waste your time playing games. Change your toys from games to instruments.
Today, at about 7pm, I met with the AMKSS Band, who got "Gold with Honours". I am living just 10-20m away from the band room, and my primary school band seniors and friends are there. I hear them playing every single day, from 2pm to 6.30pm. They are almost perfect, especially the French Horns. Let me tell you, they practice both Overture No.1 and Overture No.2 during sectionals, even though the band chose No. 2. I think it is because they are already very confident in getting at least a "Gold" award.
I asked them how they could play so well.
Here are the reasons:
1. They take their practices very seriously, and they practice with metronomes during sectionals. As I "peeped into" them during sectionals, none of them are talking or laughing and giggling, especially the SLs. The band do not talk, laugh or smile during full band too. They only laugh after the band practice.
2.They take SYF very seriously. They already know what is going to happen if they don't put much effort for this competition.
3. They are always confident and optimistic. They will never ever think that the band would get "Silver". Their target is not "Gold with Honours" but "Top Band in Singapore".
4. They always have SUPER HIGH energy level. The conductors or the majors do not scold the band or even insult, they just comment and suggest, not because they are playing very good, but to ensure that no one gets pissed off by anyone, especially the majors.
I seriously hope that you all can learn something from the AMKSS band. It is time to take SYF very seriously.
by Seung Hwa
P.S. For those who like to give nicknames to band members, better stop your habit. It would let the "victim" unhappy, or even depressed. So please do not call me "Jesus" amymore. It is an insult to my religion. Furthermore, I am not the one who made such nickname. For those of you who take this message as a joke, we'll see about that.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
to all band members who still happen to be up at this time, pls pass the message on to the woodwind section that EVERYONE will have to go for sectionals tomorrow(friday)
all of you have finished your exams liao, should be able to come down and practice.
Use your time wisely in the band roon. not LAN shop.
After SYF everyday go LAN we dun care. in fact, if going, pls invite me hahas
You guys better go tomorrow ar, its not me who issued this orfer but james so he'll be the one punishing u all if ur dun come.. pass this on to woodwinds. thks
Cheers,
your BM
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
SYF date
To All Main Band members,
I guessed from the tagged you all should have known your SYF Day.
So now we will confirm this info.
-----------------
Maris Stella High School
Band no. 145
SYF Day = 8th April 2009 (Wednesday)
Time: 1145AM
-----------------
Do work hard for this upcoming SYF.
Our target is the same as all the bands out there.
GOLD WITH HONOURS
Whether we can achieve that, depend on EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU IN THE BAND.
Hope you all do understand your importance in this band.
So practise hard and work towards our goal!
Ganbatte! Jia you!
Fredy
I guessed from the tagged you all should have known your SYF Day.
So now we will confirm this info.
-----------------
Maris Stella High School
Band no. 145
SYF Day = 8th April 2009 (Wednesday)
Time: 1145AM
-----------------
Do work hard for this upcoming SYF.
Our target is the same as all the bands out there.
GOLD WITH HONOURS
Whether we can achieve that, depend on EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU IN THE BAND.
Hope you all do understand your importance in this band.
So practise hard and work towards our goal!
Ganbatte! Jia you!
Fredy
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