Hi everyone,

 It's been a difficult summer but we are in the final stretch for the Fall season. We may not get the Gold, but we will be playing some of our golden oldies. (Just where are these terrible puns coming from?) Because of the high degree of uncertainty with getting ourselves back on our initial feet we decided to make a judicious selection mostly from pieces we've played over the years -- though for most of you they may very well be completely new to you:

• Borodin, Polovtsian Dances, arr. by Simpson, 9 minutes. Full orchestration
  We played this in the Spring of 2004. Lots of color, both the famous romantic tune and highly charged action.
• Cecile Chaminade, Concertino for flute and orchestra, Priscilla Broberg soloist, 8 minutes
  A delightful upbeat romantic period charmer. We performed this 10 years ago. Almost full orchestra -- for some reason there are no trumpets -- but there are three trombones plus a tuba. Timpani and "harp" for percussion.
• Praetorius/Gellis, Praetorius Suite, 10 minutes.
  Back in 1995 I orchestrated a series of these (French) Renaissance dances into 5 short movements -- they are by (or collected by) Michael Praetorius, published in 1621 as the "Dances of Terpsichore" (there are several hundred dances in his collection, obviously I used only a small fraction thereof ;-)) This arrangement is not unlike the other "old wine in new bottles" pieces we've played recently (though of course I think the "tunes" here are even better ;-)) I'm re-orchestrating this now, removing the saxophones, and filling it out more. Except for the slow strings-only middle movement, it has double winds and brass, no tuba (well we'll see), and modest percussion (snare drum and timpani in my original arrangement).
• Holst/Kent, 2nd Suite in F, 11 minutes.
  This is a brand new orchestral arrangement of the famous band piece by Gustav Holst; we've played the classic arrangement of the companion 1st suite twice. This arrangement is so new that my usual source thinks it's still not available, but I was able to order it (just today!) from the publisher ;-) Four movements, full orchestration.
• Leroy Anderson, A Christmas Festival, 7 minutes.
  One of our members requested this again, to help open the holiday season. We've played it on two occasions. It's a very fun medley of classic Christmas tunes, from tender to very lively and even jazzy. Full orchestration.

As you can see this is a very varied program with plenty for all - and we still need people to help out! As expected we had some dropouts due to getting "nudged" out of HP, and some surprises too, so do keep your ears out for new members and let me know about them. We still need two more trombones, cellos, etc.

As we've had many of these in our library already, Paul is starting to upload them to our website. The last to go up will be the Praetorius Suite and Holst 2nd suite, sometime next week. George will let us know when they are ready to download.

As usual, stay tuned...