From Marching Band to Concert Band ---The Fall Transition
As the Marching Season begins to wane and we begin to give greater focus on the concert ensembles in our program, think about the focus of each of concert cycles for this school year. For many of us, we have given or about to give our parents and colleagues a first glimpse into the concert program with a Fall Concert. Now is a good time to take a good look at the concert program through a thorough evaluation of the performance so that you can begin developing strategies to move them to the next level of their growth by the end of the year.
Evaluating the Concert Cycle
One of the best ways to evaluate the students’ performance is to use the accepted assessment rubric of your state’s Music Association. A few years ago, Wind Conductor looked up rubrics several state associations and found several areas which all of them focussed on:
Tone Quality
Intonation
Technique
Balance & Blend
Musical Effectiveness/Musicianship
In all of the rubrics, these five categories were used in the formal assessment. As music educators evaluating our own programs, a thorough evaluation of these categories after the first performance will give us the data we need to develop strategies to move our ensembles forward. Once we have the data we need, we can begin implementing methods and exercises to develop the areas of weakness to take our concert programs to the next level!
PHOTO CREDITS: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hFuHP2oaG1E/maxresdefault.jpg
