SMSE 2023 Recap

This week I had the pleasure of attending the Southwest Music Summer Exhibition in San Antonio, Texas on behalf of MusicFirst. Formerly known as the Texas Bandmasters Association show, along with TCDA and TODA, this show is a great way to meet the amazing music educators of Texas and showcase all of the new products and features of your products. While brutally HOT outside (everyday was over 100 degrees), the sessions and exhibit hall are nice and cool and filled with music for the entire weekend.

MusicFirst Booth (#1436)

For me, the most exciting part of SMSE this year (I was only there briefly) was meeting up with some of our industry partners, working on some new partnerships (hopefully announcing later this year), meeting with new music publishers, and most importantly, meeting our happy customers. One of those customers, Ramon Nino III is an incredible mariachi music educator in the Fort Worth ISD. I was introduced to Ramon through Keith Dye a few years ago and and was instantly impressed with his knowledge and passion for music education. Ramon then introduced me to John Nieto, another incredible mariachi music educator in the San Antonio Public Schools who showed us some of his methods and compositions for teaching mariachi music. I was blown away. I then introduced John to the folks at GIA Publications, and the rest is history.

Working with Scott Rush, John authored the Habits of a Successful Mariachi Musician method book, and it is a masterpiece. Truly. We then had John speak with our Director of Content, Marjorie LoPresti, to bring this method book to life in the MusicFirst Classroom and PracticeFirst. John, Ramon, and Ramon’s wife Imelda stopped by the MusicFirst booth on Thursday and it was so wonderful to catch up with them.

Left to right: Mike Olander, John Nieto, Dr. Keith Dye, Ramon Nino III, me, and Wendy Imelda Martinez.

Dr. Keith Dye is presenting 5 sessions during SMSE 2023, and if you are attending you should definitely try to attend one of them. Stop the MusicFirst booth (#1436) to speak with Keith and Mike about how MusicFirst can help enhance your music program this coming school year. If you’d like to get a FREE 30-day trial, just visit this LINK and sign up.

I look forward to coming back to San Antonio for TMEA in 2024!