Wow, what a year! To say that the 2022 season was insane for us, would be a massive understatement. We worked with more schools than we ever have before on fall field shows; 145 to be exact. That included 23 new commissions. And even before that, we had the privilege of making our debut in the WGI Winds world as we worked with the Dartmouth High School Indoor Winds on their 2023 show. They competed in Dayton, Ohio at WGI World Championships and placed second in Scholastic A! Then, our very own Tim Mitchell joined the audio team for the Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps and toured with them throughout the summer, all the way to Indianapolis where they won the gold medal at the 2022 Drum Corps International World Championships. Jeff finished his first year as co-brass arranger for the Caballeros Drum and Bugle Corps. He did not tour with them at all, but the group did win the silver medal at the 2022 DCA Championships in Rochester, New York! Both Tim and Jeff designed for the Columbians Drum and Bugle Corps again who did their longest tour in corps history (by a lot). They toured the Pacific Northwest, down to Ogden, Utah and then did an entire California tour as well!
So what’s next? Well, after finally finishing our 2022 writing season, we took a deep breath exhaled. And then immediately got excited for the future! We will share more soon, but we have added two new members to our team, making the JCM team, a team of 5 full time employees. In September, we took a trip to Seaside, Oregon where we debriefed the past, looked forward to the future, had some fantastic philosophical talks about why we do what we do and we also completely redesigned our infrastructure. This included a lot of changes including how we do billing, how we distribute score requests to our clients, how we schedule design meetings and so much more. The biggest change is that we are officially a LLC! This may seem like a small thing but to us, it’s huge. From the outside, nothing really changed except that now technically we’re called, “Jeff Chambers Music LLC”. But on the inside, our infrastructure makes so much more sense and we all have a better work environment. We are so excited for this long overdue change!
Looking forward, we are excited to share our new team with you! More on that soon. Additionally, we will be releasing TWENTY THREE (yes, you read that right) new shows in our field show catalogue in the coming weeks. We also have some new indoor winds and indoor percussion shows coming out soon! Over the years, we have focused more on fall outdoor shows, but we love the indoor world too and want to do more. So, we started writing! And we’re really excited about the shows we have come up with and some of the additional arrangers we have involved in the process. We are focusing on creating A class level shows, intended for schools who are looking for shows that are fun to perform, fun to watch and competitive! Lastly, get ready for some new visual design options in both the indoor and outdoor world. We have always had fantastic visual designers we are happy to recommend to schools but for the first time ever, we have a full time in house visual designer for those who are interested in an all inclusive design experience! This person is also hard at work creating outstanding pre-written visual packages for some of our best selling shows, so if you are looking for pre-written, turn-key ready, all inclusive shows, we will have you covered!
As mentioned above, we spent a lot of time in Seaside talking about why we do what we do. And at the end of the day, it always comes back to the students. We can come up with the coolest design concepts, the flashiest props and the most innovative ideas but at the end of the day, it’s all about the students and the student experience. When students perform our shows, we want to empower them to be better musicians, better performers and better people. We’re doing our absolute best to create shows that accomplish this. How? It’s actually pretty simple. We have 3 main boxes that we want to check for our shows.
1.) Is the show fun to play/perform?
2.) Is the show fun to watch?
3.) Is the show competitive?
And that’s how we roll! None of those three things should ever be mutually exclusive. You don’t need to sell your soul to the artistic world all in the name of winning a first place trophy. Additionally, you don’t need to sell your soul to cheesy gimmicks, all in the name of getting a quick cheer out of your audience. And you definitely don’t need to make your students play music that they hate for 3 months, all in the name of winning trophies or being clean. You can be clean, challenge your students, thrill your audience and win first place, all at once! That’s what we strive to do! And our team has never been more on board with this vision.
Thank you for taking the time to catch up with us. Best wishes to all of you as you conclude your fall seasons and jump into concert music, indoor ensembles, jazz festivals, spring trips or whatever else is on the horizon for your programs! Just know that we are always here to support you however we can and we are so grateful for all of the love and support our clients and fans have shown us through the years!
Jeff Chambers