Monday, March 28, 2011

Festival Auditions Open for ChCh Schools' Music Festival

Applications for individual pupils to participate in one of the Special Groups - Senior Choir, Orchestra, Concert Band or Recorder Ensemble - are now OPEN.
Click here to apply for an audition.
Applications close soon on 14th April. (last week of term)

Music lessons resumed

Itinerant music lessons
All music lessons will have resumed by the end of this week. Lesson times for those yet to return to Chisnallwood are still in the timetable.

Groups summary
Groups continuing from the start of term:
Orchestra (Monday)
String Ensemble(Monday)
Ukulele (Wednesday)
Jazz Band (Friday)
New groups:
Percussion (Monday)
Choir (Thursday)
Glee (Thursday)
Rock Bands (TBC)

New Itinerants
Vocal lessons are now being shared between Jess D'Ath and Amanda Winfield.
Many thanks to Amanda for picking up the extra teaching to make sure that no one misses out on lessons. Amanda is a highly experienced professional vocalist.
Dave Smith, the drum tutor has left teaching after the earthquake. He was at Chisnallwood for 12 years and we are grateful for all he contributed over that time. We wish him well in his new building career.
We welcome Henare Kaa who will take over drum tuition. He is highly experienced, having a degree in drumming. He is a talented drummer, teacher and vocalist.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Earthquake Update for Chisnallwood Music

Dear Chisnallwood music families (those with internet and power)

Firstly, I truly hope you are safe. This has been a very hard two weeks and I have often wondered how our Chisnallwood families are doing; coping with loss of loved ones, homes, businesses and basic services in local suburbs.

I would like to let you know that most of Chisnallwood is in a good state - the classrooms have all passed the structural test, with the only real damage being to the administration block.

The Performing Arts block is in very good state indeed, with only very minor cracks. We will be in tidying up this week and then just have to wait for confirmation of other services but plan to start back on March 16th.

Mr Paton has been posting updates on the school website, so please keep an eye on this for confirmation:

www.chisnallwood.school.nz

Unfortunately the website hasn’t been opening in older versions of Windows Internet Explorer for everyone, but has been fine in Firefox, Safari and Chrome. This Explorer problem is currently being looked at.

We are looking forward to school resuming along with music lessons and music groups! The itinerant staff have been raving to me about the potential of this year’s students and I thought the same about the 2011 orchestra and jazz band who were sounding great for only two practices!

There are a few of you with instruments at school – these are all safe in the storage room. If you need yours before school resumes, please let me know.

I realize there may be some families who have left Christchurch. If you can, please let us know if this is a temporary or permanent move. Also please let us know if there is any other reason your circumstances no longer allow you to learn. We will do what we can to help.

I have created a brief form for you to fill in which would help us if you could fill in. This is at chisnallwoodmusic.wikispaces.com

In the second week of the holidays (after Easter) I hope to have a series of workshops for rockquest bands, jazz band and sound techs. I will confirm this later. This is because both RockQuest and JazzQuest competitions are being held in term 2 this year.

It is natural for us all to put music on the bottom priority at a time like this. So it felt strange last Friday for me to go and play for a wedding for 6 hours. But when we got started, it was a surprisingly helpful experience.

I hope we can help students by continuing the music programme alongside regular classes at Chisnallwood. And if you know of any other practical needs in our community that we may be able to organize help with straight away, please let me know.

Judith Bell