Dear Members,
Welcome back to another event-packed year with MTAC South Coast! Your board hopes that you have all had an enjoyable and hopefully, relaxing summer and are ready for the new scholastic year.
I would like to remind members of the upcoming Wednesday, September 19, 10:00 AM branch meeting at Fields’ Piano. This is our only required meeting and is a very important CM information, general branch event and business meeting. The meeting will include performance of the concerto competition winners: First place winner Jake Clayton, student of Carol Stewart, will perform the third movement from W.A. Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 23, K. 488 in A Major; second place winner Kenichi Kiyama, student of Yang Bartolotti, will perform Eduard Lalo’s “Symphonie Espagnole” op. 21 in D Minor, first movement; third place winner Yoko Nagafuchi, student of Chizuko Asada, will perform the first movement from W.A. Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 26, K. 537 in D Major. The Honorable Mention winner, Annie Chang (student of Dana Freeman) will not perform.
The other half of the meeting will include general announcements as well as specifics regarding the 2013 CM evaluations. If you cannot attend the Branch CM Information Meeting, please contact your CM Branch Chair Sandely Miller, sandely@cox.net, as soon as possible for approved alternatives. Teachers who do not attend the meeting may not be able to register their students in CM via the online registration system, and may risk having student registrations dropped automatically. We look forward to seeing all of our esteemed members at this special meeting!
Our first Vice President, Melody Lu has been working closely with Andy Huynh our Website and On-Line Event Designer and Master, on our on-line event registration. I encourage all of you to visit our website often for general up dates and our event calendar; by so doing everyone will be well-informed and up to date. Our new and improved on-line registration will be up and running for our fast approaching November 10 & 11 Classical & Romantic Festival. We think that you will be pleased with the overall efficacy of this program.
A very important event, our annual Masquerade Concert fundraiser is coming up on October 20 & 21. I encourage ALL of our members to enter students in this fun event. This year we hope for a high participation. Participants will automatically earn 1 point toward a personalized trophy in our Trophy Exchange program! Ana Marie and Andréas Eckstein will work their magic on the beautiful printed programs and treat sachets. Our branch funds our events with proceeds from this fund raiser hence its importance!
Our festival chair, Chi Asada will brief teachers on the new festival scoring system. We will be using this system for all of our branch festivals this year. If it proves satisfactory we will continue using it in years to come.
Melody and Andy are planning to add a photo gallery to our website. Before we can do this we will have to begin taking some pictures and that will start at the September 19th meeting; be prepared to “mug” for the camera!
Finally, at our branch meeting we will be taking a vote on the preferred emphasis for our performance master class:
2012/2013 Masterclass:
Option 1. All Chopin with Dr.Wojciech Kocyan
Option 2. Contemporary with Dr.Mikhail Korzhev
Or both 2012/2013.
I and the South Coast board look forward to seeing all of you at the meeting!
Musically yours,
Vivian Lee R. Field