Central Coast Section Update

CENTRAL COASTCentral Coast Section Update Samuel Oh Central Coast Section President

Greetings from the Central Coast!

As we move forward to the new future, I hope everyone had a restful summer and whatever week you are on has been successful so far. As for me, students seem to be happier to be in school and more engaged this school year. Last year, there was a lot of uncertainty and challenges, which I thought were a lot worse than teaching online during distance learning. With many barriers now removed, I believe we are in a new beginning.

After one year of struggling teaching online and another year of getting students back into a routine on how to be a student, it seems like this school year is the year to be very optimistic. In the Central Coast it is our goal to host all of our normal events, just like the pre-pandemic years. That means we will be having all of our honor events and festivals as planned. Honors auditions will be due around mid-October to early November with the performances in January and February. As for the festival, the proposed month is March. We are in the process of finalizing the date once we have found a venue.

Two weekends ago on September 10th, 2022, we had our general meeting/In-Service day. It was very productive and we had great speakers who spoke at the In-Service. During our general meeting we were able to fill in our last board position. I am happy to announce that Edward Maag from Soledad High will be joining us. It is great to have more representation from southern counties to be involved in our events. As president, I am going to make it my goal to reach out to the southern counties to have more representation and voice for that region.

Another thing I would like to add is that for our solo and small ensemble festival, we are going to make some changes that I believe will be more inclusive and open. For starters, it has always been the tradition to have the soloist find a piano accompaniment, but we are going to be more relaxed with rules. If the piece does not need accompaniment, that would be fine, or the student can play with a piano part track. Much of the student demographic does not have the resources to have a piano accompaniment and we do not want to deter these students away from performing. Another change is that we are open to any genre. It does not have to be western music. Many of the students in Monterey county belong to a Mexican banda/cumbia group. We are allowing that genre of music to be performed as long they have music for judges to follow. This will also include music instruments outside of the norm, such as accordions or bagpipes.

I hope we will be able to have a great school year and it will be as normal as we can get it to be.