Each year, a group of students from the high school get selected to go to districts for chorus, band and orchestra. These are festivals put on by The Pennsylvania Music Educators Association (PMEA,) a non-profit organization that promotes musical development and education not only for high school students, but for Pennsylvania as a whole.
To be part of these festivals students must audition, and the audition process varies depending on which ensemble students want to be part of. For district choir, students are selected to audition based on their previous auditions for school ensembles such as Troubadours or Concert Choir. Mrs. Haldeman then selected around 10 students per voice part to audition for PMEA judges in a blind audition. Between 500-600 students from the entire district audition, and 200 are accepted to be part of the district choir, which is 25 people per voice part. Representing MT in this year’s festival will be Maggie Ainslie, Valeria Blanco, Cate Caplan, Owen Carney, Tim Cruz, Grace Kline, Kennedy Meglic, Gabby Muller Melo, Sophia Irvine, Lily Reaser, Ben Schnabel and Zach Zimmerman.
“It’s not only a true honor to have the privilege, but also a real confidence-booster. It’s nice to see all the effort and hard work me and my classmates put in to really pay off,” said Reaser, a junior.
District choir will begin on Jan. 26, when all students involved will spend the whole day practicing to then perform on the evening of Jan 27.
The audition process for band and orchestra is a little different. For orchestra, top players from each of the four string sections volunteer to play a prepared collegiate level piece which they then prepare with the other musicians in the district if they get selected by the PMEA representatives. There about about 500 people in the district that audition and approximately 25 from each string section are selected to be part of the district ensemble. Anyone in orchestra is able to audition but few get accepted to play. Representatives from MT who will be participating in district orchestra are Oskar Filippo, Zach Zimmerman, Nora Lowther, Colin Bube, William Lee and My-Tam Huynh.
“Being part of district orchestra has always been a goal of mine and I’m so excited to be able to play with such talented people,” said Filippo.
District orchestra will take place Feb. 8 through Feb. 10.
District band occurred on Jan. 13 at Ephrata High School. MT students who participated were Jairus Jarvis, Lily Babione and Andy Do on clarinet, Alyx Maxie and Ace Davis on bass clarinet, Cameron Ribich on alto saxophone, Bill Wang and Jacob Hawkins on flute, and Owen Carney and Daniel Benack on trombone. The number of students selected for district band by PMEA varies depending on the instrument.
