The Lamphere Schools bands, grades 7-12, performed a preview concert for their upcoming festival performance. The festival will take place at Warren Woods Tower High School on March 5th at 4:30 for the middle school band, and March 12th at 7:00 for the high school bands. At the festival each band will show off three different pieces they have been working on mastering. These three pieces will consist of a march, a piece to show off their skill set, and a piece picked by the band themselves. Below we have the point of view of a member of the symphonic band, (Gabriella Novak – grade 12) and a member of the audience (Evelyn Dempsey).
From an audience member point of view, the concert went beautifully! This was my first time attending a school concert and I believe it went very well, even though I do not have another concert to compare it to. I really liked seeing the progression through difficulty levels within the different grades, also the progression of skill throughout the stages of bands that LHS offers. I did not notice any weak points from the point of view I saw the groups perform at. All I saw was a very well put together festival preview and am excited to see more from the different levels of the bands.
From a players point of view: This program was something the bands have been working on since November. Performing these pieces as a senior is very special to me since this will be my last time performing at festival. It’s been amazing seeing our band grow and seeing the younger grades’ excitement. The atmosphere of the stage cannot be beat, the energy is high and spirits are up, again so many months of work has been put into this program so getting to perform it in front of my loved ones always means the most to me. For a standard festival program you play a march, a chosen piece selected by the judges and a chosen piece from a list provided, the Lamphere Highschool symphonic band played The Boom Boom Gallop for the march, A New Day Arisen and Credo, these pieces are intricate with tempo changes, key changes and time signatures like 7/8 making it more advanced and difficult, there is also a percussion feature in our chosen piece A New Day Arisen, all these pieces are interesting and engaging for listeners and players! I’m so happy with how our concert went, we executed everything very well, paying attention to dynamics and tone quality well and overall playing well whilst having fun! These pieces have been well loved by our group and we are all so excited to perform these!
Festival is such a special part of concert band, we get to test our skills playing in front of judges and getting scored on our overall performance on a scale 1-3, 1 being the best scoring, but that’s not all festival is about, bands will also play a sight reading piece, a piece selected by a judge we will not get to see until 5 minuets before its played, testing adaptability and confidence playing a piece for the first time, this is also judged on a scale of 1-3, we hope that Lamphere will all bring home 1’s and beautiful medals for all their hard work we wish them luck this upcoming week!
7th grade
8th Grade
Concert band
Symphonic Band