The Brass Tacks

Telemann Fantasias - Free Download

Euphonium virtuoso soloist Kevin Thompson is offering a free download of his arrangement for solo euphonium of Telemann's Fantasias (orig. for flute), in celebration of 10,000 track downloads of his CD recordings.

Follow this link, where you’ll be able to open, save, and print (in PDF format) Twelve Fantasias (TWV: 40:2-13), by Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), arranged for solo euphonium. The arrangement may also be suitable for other instruments.

How to Clean Your Trombone

Here's a fun video by trombonist Nick LaRiviere (featuring original music). Good for students with stinky horns!

National Anthems for Travelling Ensembles

A new website allows conductors, teachers or other individuals to download free arrangements of national anthems for various ensembles. The arrangements are playable by different combinations of instruments, such as U.K. brass band, symphonic band, clarinet choir, brass ensemble, stage band, marching band or string ensemble. Full percussion parts and piano reductions are also available for free download.

The site is intended for youth, school or professional ensembles travelling abroad. The website's owner (Colin Kirkpatrick) has 26 anthems there at present but will be adding more.

Climate Action Dividend Coming Soon!

It's June 1, almost time for us lucky BC-ers to receive our $100 cheques from the government!

"The Climate Action Dividend provides a non-taxable one-time payment to make it easier for British Columbians to choose a lower carbon lifestyle.

Individuals

British Columbia will make a payment of $100 to each individual who, on December 31, 2007 is:

• a resident in British Columbia, and
• 18 years of age or older

Eligible Child

British Columbia will also make a payment to the individual of $100 in respect of each eligible child of that individual if, on December 31, 2007 the child is under 18 years of age, and if on January 1, 2008:

• the child resides with the individual, and
• the individual is the parent responsible for the care and upbringing of that child.

Some individuals under 18 years of age are not treated as an eligible child, for example a person under 18 years of age who is married. In this case, the person who is under 18 years of age will receive the $100 payment.

Exceptions

You are not eligible for a payment if you are confined to a prison or similar institution for a period of 90 days or more that includes January 1, 2008.

Receiving the Climate Action Dividend

If you have filed an income tax return for 2006 or 2007, the payment will be sent automatically to your mailing address. If you have dependents, who are under the age of 18 as of December 31, 2007, and are registered for the Canada Child Tax Benefit with the Canada Revenue Agency, you will automatically receive their $100 payment. The payments will be made by cheque and issued in June 2008.

To ensure you receive your payment you should file your tax return as soon as possible."

If you haven't filed a 2006 or 2007 income tax return, you can apply for the Climate Action Dividend by filling out the Application Form.

Passive Income - May 2008

	April	May
Dividends	$200.59	$117.09
Interest	$25.68	$11.45
Capital Gains/Losses	$0.00	$512.10
Book/Music Sales	$179.93	$57.95
Total	$406.20	$698.59
Annualized	$3,481.50	$3,619.60
Change	9.5%	4.0%

Goal: $2,000/month or $24,000/year.

One of my income trusts went up a bit too exuberantly in May. It wasn't that great an investment, so I sold it off to take a bit of profit. Hence the $512.10 gain, which looks nice in May but will cost me some dividend income next month! I'm gradually moving more cash into the market, taking advantage of dollar cost averaging to lessen risk.

Documenting the IRS Six Year Policy

We knew that U.S. citizens residing in Canada–who haven't been filing their U.S. returns to report world income–were allowed to catch up without penalty by filing the last six years, as long as their intentions weren't fraudulent (if tax is actually owed to the U.S. interest would be charged on overdue amounts).

This policy applied if the taxpayer filed their six years worth of returns voluntarily; if the IRS discovered and came after the taxpayer, penalty charges would not be waived.

Although this policy is mentioned in several books on the subject, I've never been able to find an official IRS reference to document it, until now...

From the Internal Revenue Manual (IRM), Section 5.1.11.6.1 (05-07-2002):

Enforcement Determination
Enforcement of filing requirements will normally be pursued for a six year period. Always request all (non-fraudulent) unfiled returns. The taxpayer may file for all open periods regardless of the age of the delinquency.

Exciting and heady stuff for us tax preparers!

New Music for Brass

Arcangelo Corelli - Concert Grosso No. 8 (“Christmas Concerto”)

A moderately difficult brass quintet arrangement suitable for high school or college level groups.

Available at: www.musicforbrass.com

I'm in Word Processing Heaven!

I didn't have much to do this evening, so for fun downloaded and installed a little freeware program called Jarte. I fell in love with it almost immediately.

The website says that Jarte uses "the same word processing engine used by Windows WordPad. The difference is that Jarte builds far more capability around the WordPad editing engine than the WordPad program itself does." I'm not sure what all that means, but I do know that writing with this program is easier and more fun than in any other word processor I've tried.

Some of the features I immediately liked:

• Attractive, intuitive interface that is easy on the eyes;
• Menu for click-less operation of the program;
• Super easy insertion of tables;
• Integrated tune up of Window's Clear Type settings;
• Integrated Canadian-English dictionary.

One of the first things I did with the program was visit Microsoft's Clear Type Tuner. I had no idea that this web page even existed. A few moments of tweaking and lo and behold...my monitor was displaying text in a much more readable style (you need to visit the Clear Type Tuner using Internet Explorer–Firefox doesn't work).

I tested the Canadian-English dictionary with two words: "centre" and "cheque." It flagged "center" as a misspelled word and suggested "centre" as a replacement (hooray!), but then flagged "cheque" as a misspelled word (darn), and suggested "chequebook" as a replacement (oddly enough). I guess you can't have everything.

Inserting simple tables is easy, but there is no support for features such as merging cells or applying cell borders. I didn't explore the insert spreadsheet function. It might be possible with a little grunt work to simulate a table with a spreadsheet, or perhaps it would be easier to just go back to Microsoft Word.

Another serious limitation and reason to keep to Word around: no built in mail merge.

Give Jarte a try here.

New Music for Brass

We have added a nice arrangement for brass quintet of Pietro Mascagni's Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana. Challenging for first trumpet, but not too difficult for the other players. A good piece for "gigs" of all kinds, or as a training work for high school brass ensembles. Check it out at www.musicforbrass.com.

BBC Young Musician of the Year

Check out this 12 year old Trombonist playing the last movement of the Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra by Henri Tomasi.

Thanks to Gordon Cherry for finding this video on YouTube and sending it around!