In March, our school’s choir and orchestra classes travelled to Ft. Zumwalt East for the Musical Large Group Festival. In this event, musical classes from various schools got together and performed two songs on stage, and sight read one in a separate classroom. This year the orchestra class received all 1’s for their performance, and the choir class received a 2 for theirs.

When asked about her feelings on the ratings awarded to the orchestra class,  the orchestra teacher Amanda Davis said that she was ecstatic that all of her class’s hard work over the last few months had paid off and that they had achieved their goal of getting all 1’s in the festival. 

“I’m super excited that we did well at the large group festival, all the judges gave us the highest rating. We went on stage, we killed it… all our preparation had a purpose and we achieved our goal,” Davis said.

Junior Maximillian Shiels, a student in Davis’s class, had similar thoughts and feelings to his teacher. When Shiels heard that they had gotten all 1’s at the festival, he was stoked since their class has had a streak of 1’s over the last few years. Not only that, but Shiels was also very proud that he was able to be a part of the festival and that he got to see and participate in the practice and dedication that they went through in the months leading up to the festival.

“The school’s on a streak with getting all 1s and to be part of that was really cool and you know it’s just really cool to see all the dedication that both orchestras went in to play as one orchestra, and I was really proud to be a part of that,” Shiels said. 

Moving on to the school’s choir, freshman Isabella Lewis, a student of the choir class, believes that her class did a great job during their performance and that they had little to work on. However, she also believes that they could’ve used more practice for the sight reading portion of the festival. Though all in all her and her classmates are proud of their performance and their score

“We got a 2 on it, our sight reading wasn’t the best,” Lewis said, “but we probably could’ve done better practicing for it and then our performing on stage, we did pretty good. They had made a few comments so we got a 2 on it, but overall it wasn’t bad. I think we did good performing on the stage.”