solano winds wants you!
Solano Winds is actively recruiting musicians to join us for our 30th (2024-2025) season!
For Season 30, we welcome all musicians who played a brass, woodwind, or percussion instrument and are proficient at reading music. While we accept members in all sections, we are especially looking for players in the double reed, trombone, and percussion sections, along with select strings (harp and string bass).
why you should join solano winds - by the numbers
#1
Most importantly, our name says it all: Solano Winds Community Concert Band
"SOLANO" - We're centrally located in the heart of Solano County. Rehearsals are in Fairfield, performances all around the region, but predominantly in Fairfield and Vacaville. But we attract musicians from a wider area, currently including Yolo, Napa and Alameda Counties.
"WINDS" - Solano Winds features brass, woodwind, and percussion players, but unlike an orchestra, we do not have string players, with the exception of String Bass and Harp.
"COMMUNITY" - This is really important to us! We are very intentional about creating a welcoming environment for each of our musicians. Attend a performance or observe a rehearsal and you will quickly witness the joy that our musicians bring to community music making
"CONCERT" - Our mission is to perform high quality music well. We've invested in a significant library over our first twenty-eight seasons, and continue to add to it today. Check out our "PAST EVENTS" to get a sampling of our repertoire and hear recordings of our live performances. You can also stream our music on almost all music streaming platforms.
"BAND" - Orchestral wind players typically have one player on each part. We instead play "band" music, which is typically written to allow multiple players on most parts, giving more people an opportunity to participate in music making. Our players are quite diverse in terms of age and experience.
#70
Become a member of Solano Winds and you immediately are part of a community of about 70 active and supportive fellow musicians. Our current roster contains about 80 active members, but we typically perform with closer to 70 players.
#4
We generally prepare four concert sets each season, each one with repertoire selected to best highlight our musicians' talents in a themed presentation. Four sets means that if you have a conflict for one or more sets, you can still participate fully in the remaining sets.
#7
Each of those four performances is typically prepared in seven rehearsals and then performed twice. The seven rehearsals gives us time to get the music in top shape, but also keeps us focused on being musically productive at each rehearsal. We leave room to develop community, but our rehearsals are really about making music together!
#30
2024-2025 is Season 30 for us! We've been doing this long enough to have figured out the bumps in the road along the way (e.g., Spring 2020!). We have a handful of folks that have been with us since we started in 1995, but welcome new members for almost every concert set.
#17
Season 30 will be Music Director Bill Doherty's seventeenth and final season on the podium, as he will return in Season 31 to the trumpet section, where he enjoyed spending Seasons 1-13. Our search for a new Music Director is underway.
#5
Our Brass Quintet and Woodwind Quintet are just two of the small ensembles that we support. Also active currently are a Brass Trio, a Flute Choir, a Saxophone Quartet, a Jazz Ensemble, and various ad hoc duos. Solano Winds provides sheet music and helps to coordinate rehearsal and performance opportunities for the musicians in these ensembles. Each of these small ensemble members also performs with our Concert Band. These ensembles are completely optional, but provide another musical (and community!) outlet for those who are inclined to participate.
#2020
Those small ensembles were a huge part of our response to the pandemic, especially in 2020 and early 2021 when we could not assemble as a full concert band. We continue to place the highest priority on the health and safety of our members.
the details
Check out our exciting repertoire for Season 30 here!
We rehearse Tuesday evenings in the Music Room at Golden West Middle School, 2651 DeRonde Drive, in Fairfield. Rehearsals are from 7:00 PM to 9:30 PM. Rehearsals for Season 30 begin on August 20, 2024. With the exception of a Winter Break in December and a couple of nights off during school vacations, we rehearse every week through the end of May. A detailed calendar is available here.
Our "audition" process is very simple and informal. Come to a rehearsal and play with us for a week or more. We'll both know pretty quickly whether or not we are a good fit for each other.
Solano Winds has a $50 participation fee for its musicians. In your first season with us, that includes our Solano Winds polo shirt that we wear in some performances. The fee also offsets some of the many costs of running an organization like ours. You can take care of this fee in your first rehearsal, or you can pay online here.
We strongly encourage our musicians to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19. You can read our complete Health and Safety protocols here.
Check out the rest of our website for more information about us! Don't hesitate to reach out to our Music Director, Bill Doherty, with any questions.
