We’re either recovering from, or planning for, our Winter Concerts and are on our way to the Bay Section Conference for educational planning and rejuvenation, networking, cheering on of colleagues, as well as supporting student experiences in the Conference performing groups. What’s next on our calendar? Festivals, of course!

The refund deadline for all Large Group Festivals was December 1; any cancellations from here on out are non-refundable. Executive Treasurer Sandy Miller and I are most appreciative of the prompt and conscientious responses to the reminder emails for late festival fees. Your attention to this financial matter contributes volumes towards the continued success of our many Bay Section festivals.
There is a misconception that your registered groups will automatically be dropped from a festival if you either ignore the fact that you’ve registered ensembles there, or lose track of the “three weeks to pay” window. Your groups will not be dropped, as it takes my human touch to delete a group from the festival database; SoloChair.com does not work on a three week time out system, but it does send red flag warnings to the Treasurer.

You will be notified before any drastic measures are taken. It will be most helpful if you could let me know whether the group you’ve registered will actually attend that festival, and fees are on their way, or if you only registered to secure a spot somewhere / anywhere and need to be removed from that site. Once you’ve completed the registration at the site you prefer, please, please contact me so I can remove you from the festival site database you don’t want to attend. This opens up a spot for another director that might be waiting for the spot you vacate.

No doubt your calendar will be shifting and changing, as will the extra —curricular lives of your students; if you find yourself in a situation that requires you to either move your group to a different festival date or site (as available), or cancel from the festival all together, please contact me and I will happily assist you with your relocation in the SoloChair.com database. In addition, if you need to change your performance preference from early to late, or vice versa, please contact your host, or me, and that change can be granted as well.

I’d like to encourage you to contact me at any time with whatever questions you might have surrounding festival logistics. I am accessible via all genres of communication; my contact info can be found in this issue of Tempo, as well as the www.cmeabaysection.org website. I welcome your communication and correspondence.

Good luck with all of your groups this festival season!

Welcome back to the grind. My sincerest wishes go out to all of you that the shock of returning from your divinely wonderful break does not overwhelm you, nor deter you from the memories you accumulated while frolicking on vacation. Okay, down to the business of starting again.

SoloChair.com is back; improved, updated, and ready to go, as of September 1. If you are a new teacher, you must log on to SoloChair. com and create an account for yourself prior to registering, as all festival registration is done on-line; there is no paper registration. The instructions on SoloChair.com are very user-friendly and easy to follow.

If you are a returning teacher to SoloChair. com, please update your account profile, as without these updates you might not gain access to the festival for which you’d like to register. Please remember to click “submit” before closing the page.

A new feature that has been added upon registration is the ability to list the alternate schools in which you teach and will be registering; your invoice will be mailed to your primary school address that is listed on your account profi le.

Registration begins at 5:00 AM on September 1, with out-of-area registrations (i.e. a director from Area II wanting to attend a festival in Area VI) becoming available on September 15. Our refund deadline for large group festivals as always is December 1. Refunds will not be granted after the December 1 deadline unless it is CMEA Bay Section that cancels any event for which you’d registered.

Refunds will be mailed to you before this December 1 deadline if after you register you realize there is a confl ict you are unable to resolve. If you do fi nd yourself in the position of needing to move, or change your initial registration from one to site to another, you can do so, with our assistance, without penalty; you’ll need to notify the Executive Treasurer, or the site host(s), or me, in order to complete that process.

It is extremely important that you meet your three week window for festival fees receipt to our Treasurer, Sandy Miller. The invoice states that your fees should be received within three weeks of registering. However, if you do not meet this deadline, you will not be automatically dropped from the festival; rather, you will receive a courtesy notice from Sandy reminding you that your fee has not been received. At this time, please be courteous enough to respond to her with an explanation. I would like to reinforce the statement that you will not automatically be dropped from any festival without fi rst being notifi ed. We appreciate and encourage your participation in festivals; therefore, every attempt will be made to contact you.

We suffered quite a loss during the 2007 festival season due to several directors failing to pay fees of festivals they’d (actually) attended. If you do not pay your fee(s) prior to the date of the site host’s festival logistic mailing, and you fail to notify our Treasurer or me after repeated attempts to contact you, you will be notifi ed (again) via email, and/or phone, and/or hard copy mailing that you have been dropped from the festival.

Our Band/Orchestra and Orchestra Festivals have been re-named to refl ect your Area, as opposed to region, AND we’ve added a few new festivals to accommodate needs that arose in various areas:

Band/Orchestra North is now Band/ Orchestra II/VII

B/O South is now B/O V/VIII

B/O East is now B/O III, and we’ve added a (one day) B/O IV, as well as a (one day) -Band IV

Orchestra West is now Orchestra I/VI

Orchestra South is now Orchestra V/ VIII

We’ve added an additional two day B/O festival in Area II; B/O IIa to be held at San Ramon Valley HS and B/O IIb to be held at Deer Valley HS, in addition to a two day Band festival at Ygnacio Valley HS.

We’ve unfortunately eliminated the Jazz Solo portion of the Jazz Solo/Combo festival due to extremely low enrollment over the last three years. Jazz Combo (8:00–12:00) festival and Vocal Jazz (1:00–5:00) festival will run on the same day; please refer to the CMEA website for further information, rules and procedures.

You will notice that our large group registration fee has increased by $25 (up to $175) still proving that CMEA provides mucho “bang for your buck”.

Our new webmaster, Steve Hendee, has been updating the look of our www. cmeabaysection.org website which will off er a more in-depth availability to information, resources, articles and more, including several links about festivals that off er SoloChair.com registration instructions and information. In addition, for your convenience, you will now be able to access festival evaluation forms and adjudication evaluation forms from the CMEA website. How fantastic is that?

You’re ready, you’re optimistic. Your back– to–school experience will be satisfying. Hip, hip, hooray! 

Pssssst, summer is almost here. We all can reflect over our school year and acknowledge for ourselves what worked well and what didn’t work well. I truly enjoy this time of year, as it assists in putting most of the unpleasant issues into perspective that didn’t feel so good while in that moment. This thought process offers a regenerative healing that encourages me to get off on the right foot and emotional state for the new school year!

This brings me to my reflections on how SoloChair.com worked for Bay Section’s Large Group Festival registrations this year. In my opinion, there are many positives to share regarding SoloChair’s efficiency, as well as a few minor glitches. I believe that SoloChair.com was a bit intimidating to a few of our hosts, but once all of the “chair tools” were navigated, it became quite convenient.

Pros of SoloChair.com

The need for additional festivals in various Areas became quite clear very early on in the registration process as I kept watch over the numbers on SoloChair.com. Several Area festivals were full within three hours! This taught us a lot about our future festival planning, which is a very, very good thing. Expect more festival sites! The webmaster and CEO of SoloChair.com, John Beel ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ), is extremely accessible to the Bay Section Board, as well as individuals seeking help with technical problems. A built in data base containing director contact information, date of registration, date of fees received, school enrollment, sight reading or clinic preferences, and performance time preference is at the fingertips of host’s and other personnel with editing privileges.

Cons of SoloChair.com

Some of the wording on the invoice page was misleading; directors interpreted the 3 week “wait period” warning for payment as “the law”. In reality, registrations were kept alive far longer than the 3 week warning, as a professional courtesy. Directors were notified via email (and phone) by our Treasurer, and me, on many occasions; both to collect registration fees of registered groups that were past the December 1st refund deadline, as well as a reminder that fees had gone unpaid. Due to this misunderstanding, we unfortunately are still trying to collect fees from a few directors that are either preparing for approaching festivals, as well as festivals in which the director participated, but hasn’t paid. Directors wishing to register their groups for the 2008 festival season will not have this opportunity until their 2007 festival fees have been paid.

Another unfortunate issue regarding SoloChair.com arose with our site hosts. Registration information is stored in two data bases; once the SoloChair.com navigation tools were learned and practiced, retrieving school, director, and group information was convenient. However, until the navigation tools were learned, information retrieval was daunting and intimidating for some.

A big thank you to all of our Band, Choral, Band/ Orchestra, and Orchestra festival hosts. Everything was fantastic thanks to you, your students and community.

So, as your year wraps up, consider yourselves a success! Whatever your new school year brings, may it please you. Keep your eyes out for festival postings on the www.cmeabaysection.org website, as well as the first issue of Tempo, upon returning to school.

Rita Zigas-Brown
Large Group Festival Coordinator