TUESDAY - SPRING CONCERT: Please join us on Tuesday for our annual Spring Concert featuring all of our high school band students. Concert is free admission, and it starts at 6:30PM. PARENTS: We encourage all parents and family to attend what will be the final performance for a lot of band students this year, and including the seniors, which for some will be their final performance as a high school student.
All band students - your call time for the concert is no later than 5:45PM. We will need the Concert Band on stage, and the other three bands will be in the auditorium with their instruments. We will give instructions once everyone is here in the band hall. Concert attire is your UIL blacks from your April contest - black shirt, black dress pants, black socks, black shoes. If you are a senior, you are permitted to wear your prom outfits (you don’t have to, but if you want to, you can). WEDNESDAY - BAND REGISTRATION MAKE-UP DAY: May 15, 2024 from 5pm to 8pm. The flier said the 13th, and that was a goof on my part. It should be on the 15th on the Wednesday. The registration only takes about 15 minutes of time. It’s super quick this year. If you received a letter, we need to make sure that we get you in for the band next year. Please make plans on being there if you were not able to previously. FRIDAY - VARSITY BAND @ UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON: The Wind Ensemble will do their final performance of their recording tour at the Moores Opera House at the University of Houston at 11AM. An itinerary of the event is attached here. PARENTS: this is your last opportunity to observe the amazing music making that these wonderful students have achieved this year. This is definitely the most challenging program that has ever been done with this band, and they rose to the challenge this year! Typically, parents come to this performance, and we would urge all of the Wind Ensemble parents to attend your kiddos’ very last performance of the school year. We hope to send our best recordings to the TMEA Honor Band Competition, which will be evaluated in June. Greetings Eagle Fam! It's another crazy busy week for the band program! Things are starting to wrap up for the program as we are now down to just weeks left to the end of the school year.
Here is what we have going on this week: COLOR GUARD INFO MEETING: This Monday at 3:45 for anyone interested in joining the band program as a color guard member for the next school year. BAND REGISTRATION: This Monday, all returning high school band students will need to meet at the band hall anytime between 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. With your parents, you will be filling out forms, receiving your gear information, calendar, and all other information regarding the next year's marching band. JAZZ BAND TRYOUTS: are this Thursday. Please see the flyer that was posted previously concerning jazz band tryouts. The tryouts are now open to all 8th graders, as we will be looking into creating two jazz band classes next year. SAM HOUSTON RECORDING FESTIVAL: On Saturday, the Varsity and the Non-Varsity Band will be performing at Sam Houston State University to record for their competitions. An itinerary of the day will be sent out this week on the BAND app. (note: students must be academically eligible to attend these recording performances. Students who have lost their eligibility will have been notified) Now, let’s discuss the following week: BAND SPRING CONCERT: May 14th Tuesday at 6:30, featuring all band students in their concert band! UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON RECORDING FESTIVAL: The Wind Ensemble will be traveling to U of H on Friday May 17th during the school day to record for their TMEA Honor Band recording competition. An itinerary of the day will be sent out soon on the BAND app. (note: students must be academically eligible to attend these recording performances. Students who have lost their eligibility will have been notified) Greetings Eagle Fam! We are fast approaching the end of the school year and wrapping up another extremely successful year for the Atascocita High School band. In this update, I will discuss all of the events that are leading to the end of the school year, starting with this week:
Class Placement Evaluations: are beginning this week for high school band, Atascocita Middle School, and Timberwood Middle School. More information on how class placement works can be found here: https://www.atascocitaband.com/class-placement.html Results of the evaluations will be posted at the end of the day on Friday. Jazz Band Concert: is this Thursday! At 6:30PM, here at the high school auditorium. We would love to see as many people there as possible. High School Band Registration: begins NEXT WEEK at the high school band hall! Every marching band student is required to attend. Returning members are on May 6, and incoming freshman and new students will be on May 7. You come come anytime between 5pm and 8pm. To get a jump start on registration, go to the following link: https://www.atascocitaband.com/register.html Jazz Band Tryouts: May 9th. Check the BAND App post from Ms. Cook concerning the tryouts. Also, we posted more information and a flyer about the auditions previously. Spring Band Concert: Tuesday May 14th at 6:30 pm featuring all of the concert bands! We can’t wait to see you all here! Color Guard: We are going to attempt to create a color guard for the marching band next year. Informational meeting happens on Monday, then two days of practice, followed by a tryout audition pending how many students are interested. Percussion Pad Camp: May 20-22 from 4:15 to 6:30PM here at the high school band hall. All percussionists in the band are required to attend. Percussionists will be evaluated on that drum they will play in the marching band on the last day 22nd. Graduation: May 24th, 2024. More information is going out soon. This is a required performance for all Wind Ensemble and Wind Symphony students. TMEA Honor Band Recordings: For the varsity band (Wind Ensemble), they will be performing at the Sam Houston State University recording festival on Saturday May 11th, and the University of Houston Moore’s Opera House on Friday May 17th. Detailed itineraries will be going out sometime this week. Leadership Team 2024: Results of the leadership team postings will be on Friday. If you make the leadership team, you will be required to attend a SASI leadership training here in the district on June 12 and June 13. Greetings Eagle Family! Starting today, I will go back to posting our weekly updates back on the website. Middle school parents who might not be on the BAND App yet have been interested in seeing what we are up to at the high school, so I will now go back to posting the updates on the website AND the Band app so that you have multiple places to look at for the information! Go to https://www.atascocitaband.com/updates to begin finding all of our updates.
THIS WEEK:
BAND BASH: Reminder to RSVP. Send an email to [email protected] and send in payment of $20 in the black mailbox on the wall. Seniors are free. Senior parents are invited, at the $20 price. The Band Bash starts at 6PM and goes to 9PM in the High School cafeteria. LEADERSHIP INTERVIEWS: If you are a student auditioning to be on the leadership team, we will conduct interviews in class this week. CLASS PLACEMENT EVALUATIONS: Since the leadership interviews will take the week to do, we are going to push Evaluations back a week for us. We will start hearing students next week on April 29th during class. Greetings fam!
All weekly updates for the band program will now be viewable on the BAND App, as this has been our primary source of news and information pertaining to our band program. Please go to the Apple app store or the Google Play store on your mobile device and download the BAND App. Information on how to install and sign up for the BAND App can be found here: Greetings Eagle family! It’s yet another scorching hot week of record-breaking temperatures! We are super thankful for everyone being flexible with our switches to evening practices, and we know that takes out a lot on families to readjust schedules for students to be there. Students who work jobs and do other activities, we are thankful for your flexibility. We are SUPER hopeful that this heat wave will finally end and we can return to some sort of normalcy.
Here are the announcements for this week: PROGRESS REPORT NEXT WEEK: This weeks is week no. 3, and this Friday marks the last day that students will receive a grade for the progress report period. We need every single student in the band diligently turning in their work and doing great work on tests, exams, essays, and projects. You must pass your classes - zeros for assignments are not tolerated. BAND BOOSTER MEETING MONDAY SEP 21: This Monday, even though the band will be outside, we will be having our band parent Booster meeting in the band hall! The board will meet to vote at 6:30, and all parents are invited to attend the general 7pm meeting. EVENING PRACTICE SCHEDULE: We are up against the Houston heat wave once again, so we have modified our rehearsal schedule again. This week is Monday 5pm-8pm and Tuesday 5pm-8pm. Wednesday and Thursday are off. Wednesday is a church night for a lot of families, and Thursday is supposed to be the hottest day in recorded history for Houston. FOOTBALL GAME FRIDAY ITINERARY: The itinerary is posted at the top of this update and on the main website. Click the itinerary to see the full details of Friday’s football game. FOOTBALL GAME ATTIRE: This week’s attire for the football game is:
Jewelry should not be worn. This is for uniformity purposes, and jewelry can be easily lost at games. BAND FAIR SHARE FEE IS DUE: All students will need to have paid their yearly band dues of $300 no later than August 25th before we roll out on the bus. The TMF webstore is now closed, so the only option is to send cash or check made out to Atascocita High School Band Boosters. If you are requesting a payment plan, any form of payment - $20, $40, $60, $0.25, ANYTHING, needs to be in that box with a name on the envelope and fair share fee payment written on it. It will be processed in your account, and we will need to work out getting the rest paid in the future. IT’S THE FIRST WEEK OF FOOTBALL GAME!!! Good luck to the AHS Band - they have worked super hard, and we are very excited for their very first performance of the year! Greetings Eagles! We have a little bit of a “different” week in terms of rehearsal schedules. We are just weeks away from our first football game, so we need to have some rehearsal time outside to get ready for that.
REHEARSAL SCHEDULE CHANGE: This week only, we have a different rehearsal schedule. Our practices this week are:
The website calendar has been updated with these times, just for this week. LETTER JACKETS: They have arrived. If you were awarded one, come see us to receive it. FIRST FOOTBALL GAME: Less than 2 weeks away! August 25th at Dickinson High School, away game. An itinerary will be sent out soon. BAND DUES: We are at about 120 students who have made a payment towards the yearly required fair share fee. Please make sure you are active on getting this taken care of, because you will need to have had a payment made before the first football game. The web store is now closed, so the only way to pay is by cash or check in an envelope made out to Atascocita High School Band Boosters and placed in the black dropbox by the instrument storage room. SHOES: They are coming in this week. If you ordered them, they will be received here in the band hall. OTHER APPAREL: If you ordered band gear on the last runs, they will be delivered to you sometime either this week or next week. GRADES: We are in week two of grades. The next week will be the 3rd week, which will indicate where a student will be on their first progress report. September 22nd is the eligibility cut-off date. Whatever a student receives on the second progress report will determine their eligibility to participate in our activity. PRIVATE LESSONS: We STRONGLY ENCOURAGE our high school students to enroll in private lessons. Having any sort of one-on-one private instruction with a coach who masters pedagogy in their craft is highly beneficial to students. It also greatly benefits the band program in general, and it makes for the band experience to be super positive when a student feels individually successful and thriving. For more information, visit the website below to see our information on private lesson teachers, forms, etc: https://www.atascocitaband.com/private-lessons.html |
BRIAN BESTDirector of Bands, Atascocita High School 
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