Performance Opportunity

I am very excited to share that we have been asked to have some of our students perform on the children’s stage at the Elk Grove Dickens Fair on Saturday November 28th.  We found out with somewhat short notice so we are now working to gather groups of performers.  We will be booking students to play between 12:30 and 2 pm and playing Christmas songs.  Our cast of “Peter Pan” will also be performing musical selections.  If you are interested in performing and available at that time, please contact me directly at michael@newsongSOM.com so I can put together our performance schedule.  We will still be having all of our students perform at our recitals on December 12^th; or we have scheduled an additional recital with Mr Sam on December 19^th at 2 pm.  This is a “bonus” performance opportunity and we do not expect all students to perform, it is voluntary.  I hope to hear from you soon!

Sincerely, Mr. Michael

I just received a request from Fairy Tale Town for intermediate level students to come and play at an event they have this weekend.  “I am looking for any students who would be willing to volunteer their time to come out to the park and play the piano at the event. I will give these students one ticket to the event for them and one ticket for a guest, if the students are under the age of 18 that guest must be an adult. The event is Friday, Saturday & Sunday, October 23-25, from 5PM-9PM.  Ideally I would like the sets to last about 20 minutes or so, and would like to have students sign up for the entire 4 hours (5PM-9PM they would be free to take breaks and stop as needed). However if they cannot stay that long or cannot arrive that early I am flexible. We have three pianos and I would need at least three players each night.”  The theme is Beatles so we could assist you in getting appropriate music to play if you want to perform at this event.  Please let me know ASAP if you are interested so I can get back to the event coordinator. 

Also remember next week is “Wear Your Costume to Lessons” week, so we hope to see some wonderful costumes as well!

Mr Michael

NewSongs School of Music

September 28, 2009

Dear Musical Families,

            Welcome to our final quarter of 2009!  We are so excited to have you on the journey of musical growth with us.  October is National Arts and Humanities month and there is no better way to honor the month than by being a music maker!  There are lots of new things going on this quarter I wanted you to be aware of so please take the time to review the following information.

            First, we have enclosed portfolios for students taking private lessons.  These are intended to help you track your student’s progress with them.  Please take time to look at it with them and celebrate all that they have learned, because we definitely want to encourage and motivate students by taking notice of their accomplishments.  Complete a goal sheet with them for the upcoming quarter and return the portfolio and goal sheet at their next lesson (we need it to continue to track their progress). 

            Starting Monday, September 28^th we have 12 classes remaining until our Christmas break (we close December 20^th).  We will be closed Thursday and Friday, November 26-27^th for Thanksgiving.  Lessons will be rescheduled to Saturday, Nov 21^st or another convenient time.  The week of October 26-31^st is “Costume Week” at NewSongs and we encourage students to wear their costumes to their lesson (secret: if you have a special costume planned, let your teacher know and we may be able to help you learn a coordinating musical “theme song” or other piece if appropriate).  Our holiday recitals will be on Saturday, December 12^th at various times.   

            We also are very proud of our new musical theater department that we have opened this fall.  If you have not already, please note that in addition to our ongoing Broadway Chorus and Storytellers Drama classes, we are auditioning for “Hairspray” and “Peter Pan” mini-shows on Saturday, October 3^rd and Monday, October 12^th.  I encourage you and your family or friends to audition; it will be a lot of fun.  And join us for the showcase performance in the evening on Saturday, November 21^st.  We will be having auditions in January for roles in our “Dr. Suess Extravaganza” as well.

            While we are still finalizing details, we are in the process of adding to our facility the next door space at 9611 (our original home with the Elk Grove Performing Arts Co.).  We are sharing this space with Heritage Peak Charter School, which will be holding morning classes from 8 am to 2 pm.  However, it will facilitate our larger classes and give us a more readily available performance space and room for family events. 

            Finally, we are revising our billing this quarter so if you are able to set up automatic payments with us with either a credit or checking account we would greatly appreciate your help.  Remember to utilize our online appointment link when cancelling or rescheduling classes and let us know any glitches you may encounter so we may help you. 

            A very special thank you, your family has helped us grow and promote music and the arts in our community and your involvement has made all the difference!

NewSongs School of Music     916-714-4544              music@newsongsSOM.com      www.newsongsSOM.com

For Comcast cable customers, I watched a documentary this week (in the wee hours of the morning with my son) that may be of interest to our students.  It was a film on the process of making a Steinway piano, which takes a year from start to finish.  We have often opened up our pianos here in class to help students better understand the mechanics of how the piano sounds are produces, and this shows the intricacy in great detail.  If you want to check it out, find the history and nature menu on On Demand (something like that, I may not have that name exactly right), find PBS KIVE and the documentary will be listed.  It may end soon, I do not know how long it will remain in their options, but I wanted to pass along the insight.

Speaking of learning resources, we love all of the learning and creative tools we use with students here.  I would love to have more opportunity to use computer based notation software, listening assignments, etc with more computers available, but we are not able to invest in that at this point (as we are striving to keep tuition as low as possible).  Most programs we use are not all that current, so “obsolete” computers may be perfectly acceptable for our student’s use.  If you or someone you know is upgrading and would like to donate a computer, we would gladly put it to use for our students here.  Thanks for your consideration.  I look forward to seeing you soon

Mr. Michael

We have officially begun our “Back to School” week of parent open-house meetings and transitioning into fall. We have several exciting new programs you will be recieving information about shortly. In the meantime, I wanted to remind you to please attend one of our back to school evening events between 7 and 8:30 pm (Aug 10 to the 14th).

Also, thank you for your patience with emails from our new appointment system.  You will be recieving more info about it at back to school, and we now have a link on our website (www.newsongsSOM.coM) under “Students” for you to view, cancel, and reschedule appointments yourself at your convenience.  We are still working out the final bugs, but we look forward to showing you this cool new tool.  See you soon!

Dear Students
I have a friend who is moving and unable to take their piano with them. It is a very old piano, nice looking but needs some keys to be re-covered (or re-attach the broken ivory pieces, which they still have). The felts inside are very old so it has something of a ring to it when played (don’t worry if that doesn’t mean a lot to you) and the middle pedal needs to be repaired–plus a good tuning. However, if you are able to move it by this weekend he is willing to offer it for free. If you are interested please contact me for details. Michael@newsongsSOM.com

Dear Students and Parents: July 13, 2009

As a reminder, the school will be closed all next week from July 19th to July 26th. Regular classes will resume on July 27th. This holiday is part of our planned 12 class quarter and does not require a makeup lesson. Please let us know if you have any questions!

We are excited to hold a week long back to school night for all of our students. This is an opportunity for parents to come meet the teachers, see what we have been working on and ask any questions. We have many new programs recently added that we would love to share with you! We will also be reviewing our new online scheduling tool, to help make scheduling and make-ups easier and more efficient.

Back to school dates and times:

Monday, August 10th 7:00-8:30pm Piano students (including Little Mozarts)

Tuesday, August 11th 7:00-8:30pm Guitar students

Wednesday, August 12th 7:00pm Violin and Voice students

Thursday, August 13th 7:00-8:30pm Piano students (including Little Mozarts)

Friday, August 14th 7:00-8:30pm Guitar students

Thank you so much! We appreciate your business and look forward to continue serving your families!

Newsongs School of Music Staff

The photos from the June 27 & 28 recitals are up! Click here to view them.

We are proud to celebrate with our violin teacher Sydney Taylor and her husband on their new son!  Ms. Sydney delivered 8 lb 10 oz Charlie on Tuesday evening and is doing well.

A huge congratulations to all of our recital performers this weekend.  Each and every student had something very special to perform and we as teachers were SO proud!  Thanks to all you family and friends who braved the heat to come out and support the performers.  I also want to thank everyone who filled out surveys for us–your valuable feedback is helping us plan new ways to improve our programs.

Today we start our third calendar quarter, which means we have finished 24 weeks of lessons and have 24 weeks to go in 2009!  My how time flies.   We look forward to starting lots of fun new projects this week.  We are OPEN all week.  We will be CLOSED for one week of summer break the week of JULY 19th to the 26th and there will be no classes that week.

I have had a number of questions about summer vacations and breaks so I hope to clarify if you were wondering.  If you take a month of more off from lessons we do not keep you our schedule but of course do save your registration information.  When you are ready to being classes again you just need to contact us and we will let you know what times are currently open if our schedule.  You may be subject to another registration fee in some cases as an incoming student.  However, we really look forward to having you back–while available times may change we are constantly growing and adding times to accept students.  If you will gone for less that 4 weeks and want to keep your scheduled lesson time, we can make arrangements with you before your time off to credit paid but unused lessons from the month to the next month and prorate future payments for any classes we are not able to make up for you, so please keep that option in mind as well.

Again we are so proud of our students, thankful for all the supportive families, and excited about the upcoming quarter of learning!