Last May, WMS Band Director, Krystle Smith ran into composer Michele Fernandez. The result of this chance meeting was that WMS has been given the gift of its very own Mambo! Read Director Smith's note below.
"This picture was taken at the end of our clinic with composer Michele Fernandez. For reasons, I’ll never understand, Michele decided to write and dedicate a mambo to our jazz band after a conversation I had with her last May, literally the day I met her at the All State conference. Our middle school jazz repertoire needed an authentic mambo really badly and she took the time to write one and gift it to us. Needless to say, publishers wanted it next. The piece “Ritmo Cristal (Mi Maine Mambo)” is being published nationally this spring, so that all schools in the country can purchase it, by Hal Leonard publishers, and the chart will have our school name on it!!
We’ve been working on the piece since November and today was the day that the band met Michele. She was wonderful with our students and I just watched and listened her to bring them to the next level. We were and are so blessed!! "
If you'd like to hear this beautiful piece of music and more from all the Westbrook jazz bands, come join us in the newly re-opened PAC for the Westbrook Jazz Night, March 18th at 6:00 p.m.