On Oct. 17, several high school band students traveled to Grove City College to audition for the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association (PMEA) District 5 Honors Band Festival, known more commonly as “honors band.” Out of all who auditioned, two students, Audrey Mooney (10) and Jesse Reinhardt (11), were selected to participate in the event.
Prior to Oct. 17, PMEA released the audition music for the students who intended on auditioning for the festival. The pieces varied depending on instrumental section, but all ranged within the same levels of difficulty. For all instruments, the music was divided into three separate movements. PMEA selected certain pages of these movements, and of those pages, only two segments were expected to be performed during the actual audition.
On the day of auditions, students were divided into various areas within a music department building of Grove City College. Students were taken in groups with their respective instrument sections, and taken into a room individually to play their music in front of a panel of judges. After performing their selected segments of the audition piece, they were expected to read a sheet of music for the judges for the first time. This process is known as sight reading. By the end of that same day, Mooney and Reinhardt discovered that they would represent the high school at the festival.
“My participation from previous years gave me the experience that I needed to learn and grow, that I would not have otherwise gotten,” Reinhardt said.
The official festival began on the week of Dec. 8. On Dec. 12, Mooney and Reinhardt traveled back to Grove City College to practice the performance pieces with the honors band. They returned the following day, Dec. 13, for additional practice. Grove City provided food and refreshments for the students participating in the festival, as well as opportunities for students to meet instrumentalists from other schools.
“I am most looking forward to meeting new people and learning more about music,” Mooney said.
The performance began on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 2:00pm in Grove City College. Mooney, Reinhardt and the honors band played a variety of high-level music arrangements, including “Incidental Suite,” arranged by Claude T. Smith, “Americans We,” arranged by Henry Fillmore, “Silence Overwhelmed,” arranged by Brian Balmages and “The Redwoods” by Rossano Galante.
“Last year I did not practice much before…now, I practiced before, and I feel more comfortable with the tunes,” Mooney said.
Mooney and Reinhardt have both participated in the honors band festival before. However, the band director, Ms. Julia Lawrence, has not taken students to a band event until this year. When she began teaching at the high school in August, Lawrence devoted numerous PLTs to helping students prepare for the audition. The united efforts of Lawrence, Mooney and Reinhardt contributed to the students’ overall honors band performance.
“I am looking forward to all the hard work paying off that I have put in over the last few years, and taking it all in one last time,” Reinhardt said.