The Hillsdale Music Department Parent Association will once again hold their House of Blues Benefit Concert - "Keeping Music in Schools"! This exciting event will take place on May 19th from 11:30 to 5pm, featuring the best of Hillsdale's past and present. Some great groups are lined up to play including the Valhalla Jazz Band performing at 1:40pm. Buy your tickets here and enter "Valhalla HS" in the Code box so that the Valhalla Music Program will receive money back from the purchased tickets!

We will be having two extra rehearsals on Monday, May 21st. There will be a before-school rehearsal on Monday morning from 7-8:20am for Periods 1,2, and 3. There will also be an after-school rehearsal on Monday afternoon from 2:20-3:50pm for Periods 1 and 2.

Congratulations to 8 of our Valhalla jazz band students who qualified for the Grossmont Union High School District Honor Jazz Band! The following students were selected along with other students from the district and will be working with Jeff Jarvis of CSU Long Beach. Their final performance will be at Steele Canyon High School on Saturday, June 2nd, at 7pm. Please click here for more information.

Ordering gift cards is one of our fundraisers that we do monthly all year-round. However, with graduations and Father's Day fast approaching, NOW is a great time to order! What a perfect gift – with hundreds of different gift cards to choose from, you will find something for everyone while supporting RSDMF at the same time. Another idea is to purchase gift cards to the places you plan on shopping and use them yourself to purchase gifts for others, benefiting RSDMF at no extra cost! Please turn in your Gift Card Order Form (checks payable to RSDMF) to the band room by Wednesday, June 6th for delivery by Thursday, June 14th. If you have any questions, please contact Ralph or Sue Suelzle at 619-447-6792 or Rsuelzle@mail.sdsu.edu .

The Pops Concerts are Thursday, June 7th at 6:00pm and Friday, June 8th at 6:00pm on the East Lawn. Please invite family, friends, and neighbors to join us. Don't forget we will also be holding our annual Silent Auction on both nights and our Mustang Car Raffle on the second night! Please click here for ticket information and more!

The Rancho San Diego Music Foundation is raffling off a 1968 Ford Mustang Coupe at our end-of-year Pops Concert! Raffle tickets are $50 each. Only 300 tickets will be sold, so each ticket has a 1 in 300 chance of winning! Winners need not be present to win. Please click here for details and information on how to purchase tickets.

What a dramatic end to the season for Color Guard! This year the team has been struggling at performances, and seemingly never able to get above 4th place at their competitions. But the team has persisted and really started to gel as a whole unit. This was exceptionally evident this past weekend as the Guard performed in the Burgandy RAA Division WGASC Championships held at Huntington Beach Beach High School. Out of the eight teams performing in this division Valhalla took the SILVER Medal with their highest score of the year. Out of some of the other schools in Grossmont District and some of the rivals that Valhalla had this year, Valhalla placed the highest in their respective division and score. So congratulations to the Guardies and to Barbie Anthony and Gary Backlund for bringing home the Silver. The families of the team are very proud of their accomplishment. Please enjoy their performance by visiting the YouTube video posted here.
--Ben Reeve (Guard Dad)

Valhalla's Drumline traveled to Dayton, Ohio to compete in the Scholastic A division of the WGI Percussion World Championships in Dayton, Ohio. 64 drumline groups competed in their division and they made it to the Semi-Final round and placed 16th. Top 12 went to finals. Imagine that - 16th in the world for Scholastic A Drumlines! Number 1 School in California!! Congratulations to these talented drumline students and their amazing instructors, Hugo Ramirez and Dan Huss. Way to go!!!!!!!!!!

Valhalla Band and Color Guard will be visiting Hawaii for their Spring 2013 trip. The trip is planned for March 22-27, 2013. Please click here for itinerary and payment information.

If you haven't had a chance to yet, please log onto the CHARMS website to enter your family's information. This information is important in order to keep our music program organized. The school code is "valhallahsband" and your student password is your student ID#. Click here for more detailed instructions.