Thank you to everyone who donated to our Angel Tree donation fund. We were able to "adopt" 5 angels and shopped for them over Thanksgiving Break. Your generosity is so wonderful and we really enjoyed the feeling of knowing we were doing good for others. This is my favorite Hudson Band tradition and I can't wait for it every year!

We are holding a VIP Concert Seating fundraiser for our holiday concerts and the funds raised will be directly applied to our percussion ensemble's Music for All trip to Indianapolis. If you would like early access to the auditorium at 5:30pm to choose your seats before doors open to the general public at 5:50pm, fill out the form below. Tickets for VIP seating are $10 each, and are limited to the first 100 seats sold.

If you are one of the first 100 seats sold, you will have early entry through a separate door (communicated at a later date) and will be able to choose your seat early. You will only be allowed entry once your whole party has arrived. The form will be closed for seat reservations once we have sold 100 seats. Your Presto account will be charged for the number of seats you are reserving and the seats MUST be paid for before 12:00pm on the day of the concert.

BEGINNER BAND HOLIDAY CONCERT VIP SEAT REQUEST FORM

ADVANCED BANDS HOLIDAY CONCERT VIP SEAT REQUEST FORM

Beginner Band - gray Hudson Band t-shirt, jeans/dark pants (not sweats/joggers), tennis shoes (not Crocs or slides). Festive accessories are encouraged.

Advanced Bands - either long black dress (provided by the band) with flat-soled black dress shoes or black tux pants, red vest, red tie (all provided by the band) with SOLID white button-down collared shirt with SOLID white undershirt and SOLID black dress shoes with tall SOLID black socks. All students have been fitted for their school-issued concert uniform. They will be bringing them home the week of December 9. Please take time to iron as needed and try on in advance!

UNIFORM LAUNDERING INSTRUCTIONS - All concert uniforms are machine washable. They MUST be washed on COLD and HUNG TO DRY! DO NOT PUT ANY PIECE OF THE UNIFORM IN THE DRYER!!!

Academically eligible Wind Symphony students will travel to Sewell, Armstrong, and Lister Elementaries as part of our annual holiday tour on Wednesday, December 18th. Students will wear their gray Hudson Band t-shirt with jeans/dark pants (no shorts/sweats/leggings/joggers) and tennis shoes (no Crocs, slides, etc.) with festive accessories for the tour. They will need to be at Hudson at 7:40am on 12/18 and will return back to school for 7th/8th period.

The Holiday Tour itinerary can be found here with all the details.

The Fall Practice Challenge is well underway and students should be practicing 5-6 times per week in order to complete the challenge. Find the challenge paper here. It is due on December 17th in order for students to be invited to the Elf Pajama Dodgeball Extravaganza to celebrate achieving this practice goal. Students who complete the challenge will be invited to the party on Thursday, December 19th from 4:15-6:45pm.

ALL fall band fees should be paid in full by this Friday, December 6th. Please check your student's Presto account to see outstanding band fee amounts, make online payments, etc. Don't forget about school-owned instrument usage fees if your student is using a school-owned instrument or using them daily as a percussionist. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter!

December

6 - Rehearsal

11 - Rehearsal

16 - Rehearsal (During WIN)

17 - Winter Concert

Wind Symphony percussionists will begin weekly sectionals with Mrs. Becker for the next 3 Wednesdays (12/4, 12/11, 12/18) from 4:15-5:30pm. We will begin working on Enough for our MFA performance.

Hudson Band students are invited to perform Carols on the Square with Rogers Baptist Church in Downtown Garland. This is completely optional. Details can be found here.

Spring Events

January 25 - All-Region clinic/concert for those students who earned a chair after the November auditions

March 1 - Advanced Bands solo & ensemble contest

March 8 - GISD Jazz Festival

March 11 - Advanced Bands Pre-UIL

March 12-15 - Wind Symphony Percussion Music for All trip to Indianapolis

March 29 - Beginner Band solo contest

April 1 & 2 - Advanced Bands UIL evaluation

April 12 - Beginner Band All-Star Auditions

April 29 - Beginner Band after school rehearsal

May 1 - Beginner Band after school rehearsal

May 2 - Advanced Bands Peak Festival & spring trip

May 3 - Beginner Band All-Star clinic/concert for those students who earn a chair after April auditions

May 6 - Beginner Band spring trip to Epic Waters

May 12 - ALL Bands Spring Concert

May 19 - Jazz Band concert

May 20 - Percussion Ensemble concert

This spring, the Wind Symphony will be recording for the Texas Honor Band contest. This is a competition that decides the best band in the state of Texas. We will compete against other CCC middle schools in the region, area, and state. We will be working on very difficult music, will record those pieces multiple times at different performances, and will submit the best recording to the contest. The winning band puts on a concert at the Texas Music Educators Association convention in San Antonio in February of 2026. It can be an intense process, but we believe working through the process will take our students to an even higher level of musicianship.

It’s not too early to get a jump-start on reaching out to corporate band sponsors! This year we have multiple levels of band sponsorships so potential donors can decide how they would like to support our band. Corporate sponsors in any of the four sponsorship levels will have their business logo included on our band website and in concert programs the entire school year. Feel free to print this flyer about the Hudson Band and the sponsorship levels and reach out to businesses in your community. Have your student ask a band director for copies of the flier too! Feel free to contact me at fundraising@hudsonband.org if you have any questions because I’m excited about fundraising and the opportunities we have this year!

After a rigorous judging process, our Wind Symphony Percussion Ensemble has been accepted to perform at the Music for All National Festival in Indianapolis, Indiana in March of 2025. We are thrilled to get to showcase these students on a national stage and can't wait to get started preparing for our performance. You can help by sharing info about our sponsorship levels, participating in fundraisers, and joining us for spirit nights at local restaurants this year. This is a huge honor for our program and excites us for other possible opportunities like this in the future!

The BEST investment you can make for your student's musical education is with PRIVATE LESSONS! We have the most wonderful group of private teachers around who are dedicated to providing quality one-on-one instruction to our students. Most of our teachers have been working with our students already this summer at our camps and have already told me how much they are enjoying getting to know your students. To sign your student up for private lessons, fill out this enrollment form and get it back to us ASAP. The teachers will schedule students as soon as they receive their enrollment form, so be first to get the most desired lesson time! Private lessons are $25 each week, payable directly to the private teacher. If finances are the only thing keeping your student out of lessons, we do have limited scholarship money available to help. This private lesson scholarship application is due Friday, August 23rd. We will issue scholarships at that time to as many students as possible, based on financial need. If you would like to contact the private teacher for your student's instrument, you can find all of our teachers' contact information on this page.

Students in the Advanced Bands will begin their biweekly before/after school sectionals the week of August 26th. Sectionals are required and grades will be given during sectionals. Please make arrangements to schedule appointments on the off days or weeks so your student does not miss these important rehearsals. Please see the links below for the sectional schedule for each band.

Wind Symphony Fall Schedule

Honors Band Fall Schedule

Symphonic Band Fall Schedule

All band students should now have a band locker issued to them. Band lockers are for storing band instruments and band binders during the school day. We expect all students to take home both their binder and their instrument EVERY DAY because consistent practice is the best way to improve on an instrument. We do have combination locks available to students who request one, but we do not initially issue locks with the lockers. We HIGHLY RECOMMEND students to keep their locker locked all the time. Students are welcome to bring their own locks, however, they are REQUIRED to either share the combination with the band directors or give us a copy of the key. We do our very best to keep things safe, but the best way you can help yourself is to lock your locker and LABEL ALL OF YOUR BAND SUPPLIES!

Much like the beginner band year, as students continue with band there are new/different/extra supplies that will be needed. Many of these are the same supplies that we requested for this past year, so if your student will be an 8th grader, they likely already have these supplies. Please make sure your student has these supplies when we start school. The supplies on the list have been linked to Amazon to try and make it super easy for you - just add to cart and check out!

You can find all of the Beginner Band supply lists for each instrument on our band website. They're found on the handouts page, where there's also a list of our recommended music stores that can help you rent instrument or purchase necessary supplies. Don't wait to get your supplies ordered - it takes a few days for the stores to fill the orders and you don't want your student to miss out on the first sounds of the year with their class!

This year, we will be using a new fine arts management program called Presto. For our returning members, this is replacing Charms. This program allows us to keep track of band finances, inventory, music library, communicate with members, and much more. On Thursday, August 15th, all parents and students should have received a welcome email from Presto with details on how to log in. You will be able to see upcoming events, outstanding balances, make online payments, keep track of your student's school-owned uniforms and inventory, etc. We believe this system to be much more user friendly than Charms and are excited to transition to this new program!

You can watch a quick tutorial video below!

The BAND app is the quickest way for us to communicate with you and we use it often. You can sign up for the BAND app by clicking on the link for the group you wish to join: ALL Band Parents & Students, Beginner Band, Symphonic Band, Honors Band, Wind Symphony, Jazz Band, Parents ONLY. We will send reminders about upcoming concerts, when practice records are due, sectionals, etc. Please sign up for this wonderful service! There is an actual Band app you can download as well.

If you feel inclined to donate any items to the HMS Band, we do have an Amazon wishlist for our classroom. We are so grateful for any and all donations we receive, as well as just your support! Items we are always in need of and will never turn down:

• Reams of copy paper
• Cases of bottled water
• Puppy pads (for emptying spit valves and saving the carpet)
• Candy/Stickers/Trinkets (to use as student incentives)

As many of you can probably relate to, I have become a bit overwhelmed by the amount of communication forms we are using. I have made some changes to my own notification settings on the apps. If you send me a message in Talking Points, you will notice an automatic message that lets you know your message has been received, but will be responded to on a school day during the hours of 8am-5pm. The same will happen to messages send on the Band app. The great thing about the Band app is that other parents and students have the ability to comment and answer questions as well (and I hope you all will chime in when you know the answers to questions that are being asked there).

The best way to contact the band directors is through email. Please know that we team-teach our classes and each of us only has one 45-minute conference period each day. If you haven't received a response to your message within 48 hours, please message us again. We all strive to respond within 24 hours, but that isn't always realistic. We are all setting boundaries to leave work at work (as much as possible), so we can be more present for our families at home. We spend many extra hours and days with your students, who we love, but our families must come first. Thank you so much for your understanding and for showing us grace as we put these boundaries in place.

For the remainder of this year, we will continue to share information through email (in both Presto and Skyward), post on Canvas and Skyward, and send through Talking Points and the Band app. At the end of the year, we will likely send out a survey to find out which form of communication works best for you. Our hope in the future is that we can simplify our processes and make our communication easier for everyone!

Heather Becker - Director

Dan Urban - Assistant Director

Ryan Neff - Assistant Director

Sue Manaois - Percussion Director

Website: www.hudsonband.org
Phone: 972-675-3070 ext. 52218
Facebook: facebook.com/hudsonmsband

Instagram: instagram.com/hudsonhawkband