Festival Report

Frank Longay reports that the International Suzuki Festival planning is going well. He is encouraging teachers from out of town to bring their students and make the festival more diverse. Dave Madsen and Andy Lafreneniere are organizing kids to come.

Book 7, 9 Report

Frank Longay reports that the revisions are done for Book 9’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra and that he is starting in on Capricho Arabe. Bill Kossler and Seth Himmelhoch finished going over the details of the Book 9 Sor Opus 9. The recording for the Book 7 CD is still in progress, George Sakellariou is the guitarist. The Committee is looking to find a player for Book 9, several suggestions are made.

Committee Membership

Frank Longay suggests that the Committee should start revising Book 1 after Book 9 is done. Previous discussions concerning committee membership included the idea of rotating membership among guitar teacher trainers. The decision was made that the current membership of 5 was manageable for conference calls, but that more members would make the calls unwieldy. Frank Longay wants to rotate off the committee after Book 1 revision work is done.

SAA Conference Update

At this point there are 3 soloists and one ensemble are set to play for Ben Verdery. There is a session set for Ben V. and Ben needs a topic for his talk.

Session topic suggestions for Ben include 1) how to support students who play advanced repertoire (psychological support) and 2) favorite teaching techniques, what does he rely on? Andrea Cannon did an interview with Ben and a topic came up which excited him, namely balancing all his three jobs, teacher, composer, player. All SAA Guitar Committee members plan to do their best to attend this conference.