This is a tuition-based group, so it's another money-making job for me. For the inaugural term of the Harbor Brass, I charge students $60 ($50 if they study privately with me) for a 10-week course, with a performance of the music on the 10th week, which is the last week before the beginning of school. The plan is to have the group be a year-round thing, so I will continue it in the fall, but will probably charge more for tuition because it will cover a longer period (and I want to have T-Shirts made). But it works out to be a pretty decent price for parents, and with a proper amount of enrollment, a good income for me.
Since this is a tuition-based group and not a free community group, I really stress this importance of sounding good. I don't just have them play through the music and help with with notes if needed. I treat this as a professional experience and work on the details carefully. I have to be careful with the music I select, too. Half of the members of this group are 1st-year players, so it is a very young group, and they're not entirely used to this much independence on their parts, within the context of a multi-part ensemble. Confidence and sureness isn't very high, and is something that has to be built and constructed patiently, not expected or forced. So I pick music (which so far have been arrangements by me) that is technically not too difficult, and is something they can sound very good on. Once they can show confidence playing their parts and sound solid on them, I can increase the difficulty in literature. But at least for this first summer term, we're going to keep it easy, so they can feel good about sounding good in a brass group...which will be fun.
I currently have 11 members of the Harbor Brass, and all but 4 of them study with me privately. The instrumentation is 7 trumpets and 4 trombones, so we've mainly been playing brass quartets with 2 trumpet parts and 2 trombone parts. I'm gonna actually compose an original piece this week for 3 trumpet parts and 2 trombone parts, and will hopefully get this instrumentation integrated into the ensemble more often. We haven't had all 7 trumpets at a rehearsal together yet, so doing just the quartets has been fine. With the arrangements I've made, I've added a tuba part and played along with them, to help balance out the sound.
So yeah, this has really been a success so far. And I have some really great long-term plans if I can keep this successful. As these members get older and into high school, I will form the Junior Harbor Brass Choir and start a new wave of 1st- and 2nd-year players. Depending on enrollment in the next couple years, I may need to do that sooner. I have no idea what the enrollment will be like this Fall, but it could possibly be quite a bit higher, once word of it gets around. I just gotta keep it fun, exciting & educational, and most of all, memorable.
So the first official Harbor Brass Choir performance will be on Thursday, September 1st at 7pm. It'll be free to the public, so if you're local, come check us out. You'll be watching history (hopefully).
Take care and value music.