Why does a December 15th deadline put the NTC out of the question? That's over a month to get a group together and get the entry in - the actual competition isn't until like February or March - how much time do you need?
While I understand that you want to put forth a polished ensemble, the reality of the situation is that it shouldn't take 3 or 4 months to put together a couple of tunes.
Just a quick little story. When I was a Junior in high school, I started doing some solo work at the Zion Lutheran Church in my hometown in Southwest Nebraska. The organist there is an accomplished classical organist, as well as my K-6 music teacher, and my current mentor and friend. At first he started off pretty basic. A descant here, the Clarke Trumpet Voluntary there - that sort of thing.
One week he approached me and asked if I would be willing to play something in church the following Sunday - I was always game to do playing with that pipe organ so I agreed and met him in the Band Room office so that we could find something in the files. He selected two movements of a Corelli sonata. That was a Wednesday and I can remember thinking that he was nuts to expect me to go from sight reading to performance of a piece of music that I had never seen before in just 5 days. But the pressure was on and we nailed it. This sort of thing was to become a pattern until I left in August after my Senior year to play in an Army band - he would pick some new piece of music with a short turnaround time, I would think he was nuts and go for it anyway, only to be successful when we played it for church just a few short days later.
Since then I have come to realize that having months of prep time for a small handful of tunes is not the norm - what my mentor, J. Gordon Christensen tossed at me in my last two years of high school was. I currently play in a band that has over 250 charts in the horn book - I can't possibly keep all of that stuff completely polished all of the time, so I need to be able to prep the odd tough tunes on short notice, and be able to read the rest with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
What have you got to lose? I say get some folks together, get a few charts and get to work!
