While audience members gathered to support their friends and family in the auditorium last night, band members hurried to get their notes spot-on in the wake of the upcoming Music Performance Assessments. On Feb. 25, all three of the school’s bands took to the auditorium to perform their pre-MPA concert.
The MPAs are an annual evaluation event in which high school bands from across the nation play before judges and receive ratings and critiques. The event will be an opportunity for the band to be recognized with awards for their skill.
However, this event comes with a lot of preparation, so the band has been working non stop since the end of the second quarter, sharpening their skills. Last night, they lined up in the auditorium to show students and parents what they knew—and what they didn’t know.
During MPA, the bands will have to play both music they have prepared as well as music they have not seen before. For this process, known as sight reading, they only have a couple of minutes to read over the notes before they must play the music for the first time. For many, this is the most difficult part of the MPAs, so the concert was primarily for practicing this skill.
“We don’t get much time to prepare, and we don’t get to listen to ourselves,” wind ensemble player Elliot Pang said. “We have to just roll with what comes through.”
While sight reading presented a unique set of challenges in itself, the concert was also judged in order to further simulate the MPAs. Due to the combination of multiple such pressures, some band members were unhappy with their performance during the concert.
“It gives us a good amount of performance anxiety,” senior Eduardo Ramirez said. “We need to know exactly what we need to do for a performance in front of all the judges.”
The timeline is only adding to the stress for the students. The band has their first MPA next week on March 5, and this time, it won’t just be for practice.
Regardless, any opportunity to train for the assessments must not be taken for granted, and an unsatisfactory performance can even provide great insight for what the band needs.
“I think it kind of showed us a lot of things that we can improve on within the next week before we actually go get professionally judged and scored,” intern Geoffrey Barthle said.
Barthle, a senior at Stetson university, is a new intern for the band this year. Since August, he has provided the students’ help with their music, assisting band directors Brian and Brad Kuperman.
With their aid, and with the consistent practice and dedication of all the students, the band takes the stage once again next Thursday to perform in front of professional judges for the MPAs.
