Bandmasters Review - September 2019

Texas Bandmasters Association Bandmasters Review • September 2019 5 The road ahead looks great. There is so much to look forward to in this upcoming school year for you and your band students. The responsibility you have influencing the lives of your students through their band experience is not to be taken lightly. Teamwork/sectionals, cooperation/ ensemble, acceptance/balance, grit/technique are just some of the traits that we teach in our music classes. Maintaining high standards in your program for your students to develop as individual student performers and ensemble members not only produces fine performances, but great community members as well. As I scan my mirrors, I would like to reflect on our most recent TBA convention. Just like your home campuses, there are many people working behind the scenes seeing to it that we all have the best summer convention and clinic experience, and I’d like to introduce you to a few of them. Our fantastic office and exhibit hall manager, Robin Tovar, keeps the day to day operations of our association running smoothly as she works with our membership and vendors to provide the best TBA experience. Robin’s partnership with our exhibitors is vital for creating the best convention floor experience because these partners are providing us the materials, we all need to be effective in the classroom. One can only imagine the task of designing the show floor and organizing move-in and move-out of the exhibit hall for over 600 vendors for our convention. Justin Young is our website support and registration area manager. Justin manages all things “registration”, both online and onsite for our members and attendees. Justin has just completed his 10th year of service to TBA and we are thankful for his contributions. Justin is assisted onsite by his wife Kim, Gary Fair and Sue Kuentz. This team has been a constant source of professional customer service to our members for many years. Our clinician support team for TBA is led by Chuck Kuentz. Chuck plays a vital role each summer seeing to it that our clinicians are happy by supporting them with clinic handouts and audio-visual support. Chuck also manages the “Red Shirts” from UT San Antonio. These music education majors from UTSA act as valuable support staff seeing to it that percussion equipment, music stands, and many other tasks get handled for our many convention spaces. Charlie Munsell manages the Lila Cockrell performance hall. With our community bands, featured clinicians and composers, as well as our “feature concerts”, Charlie stays quite busy backstage keeping the hall running smoothly for our performers. Charlie also pitched in between performances this summer and presented a clinic session on retirement planning. I’m not sure that managing Lila Cockrell was in Charlie’s retirement plan, but this former TBA past president continues to give back through his service to our members in this way. Our fearless “Academy for New Teachers” leader, Brian Merrill, has taken his passion for mentoring young teachers to another level by designing a curriculum and programming during our convention that targets teachers that are new to Texas or new to teaching. Brian’s years of planning and curriculum development has become a source of pride for TBA. To date, over 1000 new teachers have benefited from this TBA past president’s servant heart! Our 2019 Bandmaster of The Year, Frank Troyka, manages a curriculum and staff that serves 1,500 student leaders annually. To date, this program has impacted close to 15,000 student leaders from Texas. Frank continues to inspire our students and teachers with his dynamic approach to student leadership training. Where else can you get content and curriculum like this in a venue like TBA? Mike Brashear has just completed his 10th year of service to TBA as our executive director. Mike’s steadfast leadership for our association has helped us continue to provide a top- notch convention experience for our members. Priscilla Brashear has continued to serve alongside Mike as our spouses’ board liaison. This constant connection to our spouses’ board has continued to provide an outstanding experience for our TBA spouses and families. We are so appreciative to our past presidents that continue to step in and serve our association. A big thank you also goes out to our clinicians, monitors and other volunteers for helping to put on another fantastic show! Finally, special thanks to our staff photographer Michelle Gorden for chronicling our annual event. Have a fantastic year and we look forward to seeing you next July at #TBA2020. In the Rearview Mirror John Morrison, 2019 - 20 TBA Past President