My high school's orchestra is packed with Halo fans, and we were hoping to perform some of the music in the spring. I've been arranging pieces from the soundtrack by ear into a suite on Finale for a band/orchestra/choir combination; however, my high school director is freaked about getting copyright permission from the Halo score publishers before performing any of my arrangement. I've seen a lot of fan transcribed sheet music posted here, as well as a video online of a high school orchestra performing one of the transcriptions from this site. Also, the other high school in our district performed an arrangement of Halo music by their director, without, as far as I'm concerned, copyright permission.
If we carried through with this, we would neither charge money for the performance nor copies of my arrangement of the score.
I was wondering if anyone could possibly give me some information on the significance of gaining copyright permission for such a situation, and if such measures are necessary, who we should contact and how we should go about doing it. My main concern if we should need to do this is how long their response might take, as we are hoping to perform this sometime in May.
Thank you, any information would be greatly appreciated!