Welcome to Mesa Music!

Greetings Parents, 

Welcome back to school! My name is Kurt Gray, Music Director at Mesa Verde, and I want you to know how absolutely wonderful it is to have all of your kids in person this year. There are of course many ways to feel about the start of school after the last year and a half, but there’s certainly a palpable sense of normalcy that’s starting to return. A mix of anxiety, relief, and excitement fills the Music Room these days, and during the first week or two of school, I can’t think of anything that’s more evocative of years past than that.

The purpose of this email is to both introduce myself to the new families, and bring everyone up to speed on changes, future happenings, and needs of the Mesa Verde Music program, in order to begin the process of reigniting this musical community and the amazing students it serves. I’ll divide this into sections and try to be brief, so feel free to skip to what is pertinent for you... except for this next section!

Parent Help/Music Boosters/Requested Yearly Donation

While I have your attention near the top of the email, we are in need of parent volunteers. Our awesome Booster President Sara Budzyn is all alone at this moment, in need of at least 4 or 5 parents to form the rest of the Board which helps to coordinate fundraisers and concerts that fund our coaching staff and instrument/equipment purchases. In the very recent past, we have run a budget that enabled a robust array of experiences and instructors, and we need your help to get back there!  

Please email mesaverdemusicboosters@gmail.com if you are interested in any of our open positions, including VP, Treasurer, Secretary, and Volunteer Coordinator, or if you just want to help. Meetings are held once a month, likely over Zoom. Last year, Sara had our meetings down to a record 35 minutes!  The potential of your son or daughter’s experience at Mesa is huge, made even better by *your* involvement!

In order to get the year off to a good start prior to any fundraisers or concerts, we do ask for a yearly donation. We have a donation goal of about $18,000, with about 140 music students enrolled in a musical ensemble. We need to avoid asking for a specific amount, but if you do the quick math on that, it would go a long ways in helping to achieve our goals this year.

6th Graders

Welcome new families! We are so excited that you’ve chosen music as part of your middle school (and beyond) experience. There’s so much to tell you about but I’ll limit this email to the most pressing matter: instrument selection and acquisition.

During these first two weeks, we have gone through a process of introducing instruments in both band and strings. In Band, students will be placed on flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, French horn, trombone, baritone, tuba, or percussion.  In Strings, we have violin, viola, cello, or bass. We balance a few things when making a final selection: 1) student preference, 2) instrument specific aptitude, and 3) ensemble balance, or having a good blend of all available instruments. Students are guaranteed one of their top two choices, given reasonable aptitude and behavior appropriate for their instruments; unruly percussionists are a danger to themselves and others! Please don’t purchase or rent an instrument just yet. I will be in contact by Friday this week with the final selection for the year and instructions for what to do next!

Once the selection process is complete, you’ll have three options to acquire an instrument:

Purchase: Please contact me directly if you have your eye on an instrument already. Price is just one factor in purchasing an instrument. Reliability, repairability, availability of parts, and sizing can be easy to overlook. If you don’t know where to go, I can point you in the right direction as well.

Rent: We work closely with Nick Rail Music in Agoura Hills (by the IHOP on Kanan), who provide new or near-new instruments and good service for our students. They have an easy online rental process, a rent-to-equity program, and a designated pickup night on September 9 at Mesa Verde, from 6:00p to 8:00p. 

Borrow: Mesa Verde has a limited number of instruments we can loan out for the year for a nominal cost of $50 for the year. The instruments are clean and ready to go, but have seen several years of use. Priority is given on a need basis.

More information will come, and very soon! While I will communicate with you directly for very important, time sensitive matters, I do try to instill that it’s important your kids initiate communication with you, so feel free to try and decipher the information that comes through them, and email me at kgray@mrpk.org if you have any questions.

Ventura County Public Health and MUSD Policies permitting, we will attempt to run a full slate of concerts and events this year, likely with some modifications due to COVID. See the attached document for dates.  More detail will be available in the weeks that precede each event.

7th/8th Graders

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind start for these groups, due to some very last minute staff changes. Unfortunately, after 7 years, Apryl Garcia will not be back with us this year due to scheduling and personal matters. She played a huge role in getting our 7th graders to where they are today. We hope to bring her back in some role in the future.

As a result of this change, a handful of 8th graders needed schedule changes. I want to publicly thank all of the 8th grade kids and families whose schedules were effected at the end of last week. Mrs. LaBelle and I didn’t make the change without serious consideration of many factors, and I sincerely appreciate your support. The change will have a positive effect for their instruction as well as that of the 7th grade band students and 8th grade strings students.  As a result, we will run the following ensembles this year:

Wind Ensemble: Gr. 7/8 Band students

String Orchestra: Gr. 7 String students

Chamber Strings: Gr. 8 String Students

Puma Band: Gr. 6 Band

Puma Strings: Gr. 6 Strings

Jazz Ensemble: open to all students with at least 1 year on an instrument at Mesa (see below)

Ventura County Public Health and MUSD Policies permitting, we will attempt to run a full slate of concerts and events this year, likely with some modifications due to COVID. See the attached document for dates.  More detail will be available in the weeks that precede each event.

Jazz

We absolutely will have a Jazz ensemble this year. I don’t think I can live another year without teaching jazz. Once each of the core ensembles is in a rhythm, I’ll post music for a jam session, which will be our first rehearsal. Look for music to be posted in late September for an early October start date.  We’ll be taking all instruments this year, the only requirement is that you have at least one year of experience on the instrument you want to play. We are looking for drummers, guitarists, and pianists especially, since we don’t teach these instruments from the beginning at Mesa. Rehearsals will be before school Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 8:00am sharp.

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Lastly, please see the attached list of important dates to put on your calendar. Of course there’s more info to come regarding concert and fundraiser specifics, but that’s all for now. Please email me directly at kgray@mrpk.org if there’s anything pressing that I didn’t address in this email or did not address at BTSN. 

Musically,

Kurt Gray