Southeastern High School Orchestra

The mission of the Hamilton Southeastern High School Orchestra Program is to challenge, inspire, understand, and represent through the art and communication of music performance.

Happy New Year Southeastern Orchestra Families,

We hope you had a wonderful holiday break and were able to enjoy the first big snow of the year! This newsletter marks the beginning of the second semester and we are proud of the progress our students are making. Our focus this semester will be to continue our review of fundamentals, further our technique and prepare for the ISSMA Contest.

Please take a moment to review some of the important information below. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out!

Thank you for your continued support and all that you do for our Southeastern Orchestra program and students!

Heather Nieto, Director of Orchestras

Hamilton Southeastern High School

hnieto@hse.k12.in.us

Charles Kunz, Associate Director of Orchestras

Hamilton Southeastern High School

ckunz@hse.k12.in.us

Orchestra Families,

I hope you had a fantastic break and enjoyed some quality time with family and friends. Wishing you all a Happy New Year! As we begin 2025, we are excited to build momentum and welcome more volunteers to help grow our Orchestra Boosters.

So far, we've supported our Symphony Orchestra students with their uniforms. We are looking forward to representing the boosters during the upcoming Course Fair Thursday night as we meet incoming families looking to join our high school orchestras. Additionally, we are excited for the opportunity to promote our organization and connect with new families at the upcoming Royal Pride Junior High Side By Side Concert in February.

We will be sending out a Sign Up Genius to our Symphony families to sign up to bring snacks for the after school rehearsals that start on January 22nd. Please be on the look out! If you’d like to volunteer in any way as more events unfold throughout the year, please let us know. We’ll keep you posted with upcoming opportunities in the month ahead, so you can sign up to help out.

Thank you so much, and stay warm!

Shobana Pandian, President

Southeastern High School Orchestra Boosters (SHSOB)

We are always in need of concession donations. Please consider sending a donation in with your student for the Boosters to sell during our Spring concerts! If you drop the items off at school, please ensure that they are labeled in a bag with "Orchestra-H128/Concessions".

Thank you so much in advance for your donations!!

We have over 50 musicians between solos and ensembles, participating in the 2025 ISSMA Solo & Ensemble Contest. The contest will take place on Saturday, February 8th. ISSMA has sent out the schedule with information and it is linked in this message, above. Please take a moment to read through the information carefully. Unfortunately, we have no control over the schedule. We understand that your time(s) may not be ideal but please know that ISSMA is schedule hundreds of students that day and cannot grant requests.

Please note: IF your students registered in Group I and gets a Gold rating, they will be eligible to participate in the ISSMA State Solo & Ensemble contest which will take place on Saturday, March 1st. Details regarding the ISSMA State S&E fee and logistics are included in the linked ISSMA Solo & Ensemble Contest packet lined above.

Our Serenata and Symphony Orchestras will be performing on April 23rd in Carmel at The Palladium at Allied Solutions Center for the Performing Arts. This is an incredible opportunity for our students to perform on an outstanding stage. Our Wind Symphony and Wind Ensemble will be performing also. More information regarding time, logistics and tickets, to come soon!

Our Camerata, Philharmonic and Serenata Orchestras will be performing on April 25th OR 26th for the ISSMA District Organization Contest. This contest is hosted here at Hamilton Southeastern High School. Typically our ensembles perform on Friday evening but we will not now the exact date/time until roughly two weeks prior to the event. Additionally, since we are hosting, we will need several parent volunteers to help run the event Friday and Saturday. We will send out a sign up genius with positions that we need along with more information regarding time and logistics for this event!

The Symphony Orchestra will be performing on May 2nd OR 3rd for the ISSMA State Qualifications Contest. We typically go to Warren Central High School for this event. However, we will not know the specific date, time OR location until roughly two weeks prior to the event. We ask that you please mark your calendars for the full weekend as we cannot always control what ISSMA gives us. This competition is with other high school symphony orchestras in the state of Indiana. Only eight orchestras will qualify to go on to finals. Every student's participation is important. Additionally, if we do end up going to finals, that will be held on Saturday, May 10th. We will know our time by Sunday, May 4th. Please make sure that all of these dates and times are in your calendar and you avoid conflicts. More information will be coming next week regarding our Wednesday, after school sectionals and rehearsals.

All orchestras will participate in the Spring concert on Thursday, May 15th. This will be our final performance of the 2024-2025 school year. More information regarding logistics, tickets and time will be available soon!

Please take a moment to consider signing up with a private lesson teacher. Private lessons give all students an opportunity to grow at their pace. We teach students everything they need to know to play their instrument and become musicians. However, private lessons allow students to have one on one time with a teacher who is an expert in their instrument and will hone in on each students strengths and weaknesses giving them additional time and practice. Currently over 40 of the Southeastern Orchestra musicians take private lessons with an addition 40 students requesting a teacher!

Take a moment to view the 2024 Private Lesson Teacher google sheet for updated private lesson teacher recommendations!

As your student progresses over the next four years, you may start to find the instrument they currently have, less adequate for some of the more complicated techniques that will be required of them. If you are interested in upgrading your instrument or purchasing a new instrument, we strongly encourage you to allow us to assist you in this process. I have been teaching strings for a very long time and it is important to me that you find a quality instrument at a fair cost.

While I am happy to help you obtain an instrument from any reputable place, I also encourage you to reach out to Encore Orchestra Strings at Paige's Music. I have worked with them for many years and strongly support the way that they have worked with our families and students over the years. I am happy to meet you at the store and help you there as well. Please let us know if you are interested in upgrading or purchasing a new instrument and we will do everything we can to help you!

You can visit the Encore Orchestral Strings website by clicking on the Encore icon.

As a reminder, due to new HSE District rules, we are no longer using any of our Remind accounts. From this point forward, we will be using Parent Square for communication with families. *Symphony Orchestra families, please note that there is an additional Parent Square class for the spring semester concerning the ISSMA State contest information, rehearsals, etc.