7 minute read
A Comprehensive Guide to Band Directing (p
A Comprehensive Guide to Band Directing
Compiled and Edited by John M. Denis
Contributors: John M. Denis (Texas State University) • Kyle Glaser (Texas State University) • Jacob Harrison (Texas State University) • John Lopez (Texas State University) • Jocelyn Prendergast (Truman State University) • Brett Richardson (University of the Incarnate Word) • Jordan C. Stern (Texas State University) • Olivia G. Tucker (University of New Mexico) • Brian Wilson (Denton High School) • Jesse Woolery (Denton High School)
Written by a team of authors from Texas, one of the strongest music education communities in the United States, this practical, personal, and conversational guide for aspiring and young instrumental music educators takes a comprehensive view of all aspects of building a successful school band program.
Girded with important theoretical underpinnings for each topic, Program Notes covers the job interview, sequencing, conducting, rehearsal strategies, and dozens of other topics for beginning band, concert band, and marching band, as well as jazz, orchestra, mariachi, and modern band.
Chapters also focus on promoting creativity, recruitment and retention, finances, communication, leadership development, working with exceptional learners, and technology. Rounding out the book are a sample handbook for students, a concert self-evaluation form, and example interview questions.
With flair and years of experiences to share, the co-authors have created a resource that is designed to make the lives of young band directors better. As Denis states in the book’s introduction, “Every skilled teacher has an exponential impact on the world, and I hope this book further fosters caring people to become exceptional band directors.”
“Congratulations on setting out in an amazing, rewarding, fun, difficult, confusing career. This book is intended to be all the things I wish I had known when I started, everything necessary to make those first years more successful.”
— John M. Denis, from the Introduction
Compiler and editor John M. Denis is Assistant Professor of Music Education at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, where he teaches upper-level undergraduate and graduate music education courses. He has sixteen years of experience working with Texas students at the public school and college levels. Dr. Denis is also creator and producer of Program Notes: The Band Director Podcast
G-10595 Perfect-Bound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $39 .95
B a N d • F eatured N ew r eleases
The Golden Age of American Bands
A Document History (1835–1935)
Bryan Proksch
This is the story of the American wind band, told chronologically by those who experienced it in real time from 1835 to 1935. How did bands become bands? How did they rise in popularity? Which figures had insights and specific impacts on the development of the genre?
Through source documents and articles, Bryan Proksch takes us on an extraordinary journey from the time of the first brass bands in the 1830s, through the Civil War and the golden ages of Gilmore and Sousa, to the cusp of the wind ensemble just before World War II.
Hear from a young Frederick Fennell about his efforts to create the first band at Eastman. Read the outline of Allessandro Liberati’s unpublished trumpet method book.
Eavesdrop on Karl L. King as he muses on the fate of bands after the death of Sousa. See Patrick Conway’s first undergraduate music education curriculum. Gawk as trombonist Fredrick Neil Innes embarrasses “world’s greatest cornetist” Jules Levy at Coney Island. Explore as Alan Dodworth revolutionizes bands. Retreat with a military band in the middle of a Civil War battle. Find out what it felt like to sit in a Sousa Band rehearsal. Ask Herbert L. Clarke why he thinks you should be playing a cornet instead of a trumpet. Find out how P. S. Gilmore managed to pull off the biggest concert events in American history.
The book includes numerous rare and unknown illustrations to show you the places where band history happened. The documents include rare periodical excerpts, handwritten letters, and other writings taken from archives throughout the United States.
These first-person accounts are certain to further refine and deepen our understanding and appreciation of American band history on a grand scale.
Contents:
Beginnings (1835–1859)
The Civil War (1860–1865)
The Jubilees (1866–1879)
The Gilded Age (1880–1896)
The Band Age (1897–1914)
World War I (1915–1919)
Transition and Decline (1920–1935)
Bryan Proksch is a distinguished faculty lecturer and associate professor of music history and literature at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. This is his third book. His A Sousa Reader: Essays, Interviews, and Clippings (GIA Publications, 2016) explores the documents relating to the life and career of John Philip Sousa.
G-10368 Perfect-Bound, 340 Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $39 .95
F eatured N ew r eleases • B a N d
Completing the Circle (Online Videos)
www.giamusic.com/completingthecircle
The FREE resources provided on this site are designed for amateur and professional musicians and music educators to serve as a companion piece to Completing the Circle: Considerations for Change in the Performance of Music by Bud Beyer (G-8766). The dozens of videos and documents on this site showcase Professor Beyer’s artistic concepts, enabling teachers and performers to comprehend these concepts and exercises with greater understanding and providing them with a practical and understandable pathway to integrate these concepts into their ensemble rehearsals, their daily teaching, and their artistic work.
“We need opportunities, through the process of artistic development and research, to objectively examine ourselves and our work and what we are communicating to those around us through the arts.”
— Bud Beyer
Completing the Circle
Bud Beyer
What can a professional actor, mime, and head of the storied theater department at Northwestern University teach to musicians and conductors? A great deal. This amazing and practical book is the culmination of years of experience Bud Beyer developed while working with musicians from around the world—and beginning with Northwestern’s own legendary conductor, John Paynter. Topics covered include musicianship as communication, memorization, the art of practice, the act of performance, and the connections between musicians and audiences. Central to the book are creative exercises designed to help musicians reconnect emotionally to themselves, to their colleagues, to their work, and to their audiences.
The Ralph Vaughan Williams Transcription Series for Band
Edited by Jack Stamp
In partnership with Oxford University Press and authorized by the Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust, this major new initiative brings the incredible catalog of Ralph Vaughan Williams to the wind band community, with scholarly transcriptions by leaders in wind band composition. Learn more at giamusic.com/RVW.
For Symphonic Band
Fantasia on “Greensleeves”
How Can the Tree But Wither?
Sigh No More, Ladies
Norfolk Rhapsody No. 2
Flourish for Glorious John
For Intermediate Band
Three Organ Preludes
I. The New Commonwealth
II. A Wedding Tune for Ann
III. Land of Our Birth Transcribed by Jack Stamp Full Score and Parts: G-10396
