SAISA Music 2011

This past weekend, Rachel, Twyla and I chaperoned the ASB delegation (8 choir, 2 orchestra, and 11 band students) to the SAISA Music 2011 Festival held at the American International School of Chennai. SAISA, short for South Asian International Schools Association, is an organization that is similar to a traditional conference, a group of schools that play each other in sports and get together for a few arts weekends. The group includes schools from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, and Oman (for music only however). Each school is unique and each music director has a different philosophy, but we had a great time combining our students to create a festival band, jazz band, choir, jazz choir, and orchestra. Aside from seeing our students grow musically, it was immensely interesting to interact with music directors who face similar challenges that we do here in Bombay.

My colleague from Dhaka conducts the 1812 Overture

Conducting the festival jazz band


Rachel enjoys the artsy challenge of capturing the event in photo ...

Professionally, I had the opportunity to conduct the festival band and the festival jazz ensemble on one piece each. It was quite a rehearsal challenge to rehearse the groups for only about 45min before the performance. Trying to figure out which musical details were the most important was an interesting exercise in score study as I prepared for the festival.

One special aspect of the performance was seeing the students all dressed up in their performance outfits. Each school wears a different "local" costume to perform in and standing up on the podium seeing all the different outfits was really exciting because behind those outfits represented students from all over the world proudly representing their South Asian schools.

The coda to this festival was the first day back at band rehearsal in the ASB Band room. With the sound of the mass band still ringing in their ears, we had a great rehearsal in Concert Band. Improved tone and improved focus. Hopefully the impact of this musical experience will continue throughout the rest of the semester as we continue to tackle new and more challenging music.