The All State music festival took place May 8-11, at Spaulding High School. There were performances that the students that attended were able to see on all of the days. The first day was the scholarship concert where there were solo performances by people who had won the scholarships, it included a new scholarship category of Contemporary vocal performance. The second night had performances of the modern band and Jazz band, the modern band concert was the first ever at the Vermont all state festival, and the performers encouraged dancing in the aisles. They were coached by Steve Holley, a world renowned bassist, and music educator. The Jazz band was led by Daniel Ian Smith, a professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston, who has been performing on saxophone for 35 years. I found both of these concerts to be a great way to end the longest day of all state with a lot of rehearsing. On Saturday there were dress rehearsals and in the orchestra some adult guest musicians joined in and had to catch up to the two full days of rehearsal that the rest of the Orchestra musicians got. The concerts on Saturday were the orchestra, then the band, followed by a total stage change. And then the acapella group and the chorus. The orchestra was led by Catherine Birke, a conductor at Julliard, and the New York Youth Symphony. The program that she selected was very boisterous, and contained songs that I would describe as bangers. Following the orchestra was the band which was led by Emily Thrienen, who is the director of Bands at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. One very exciting part of the program was the shaker song Simple Gifts. Then after a short break and total rearrangement of the stage the inaugural concert of the acapella ensemble was performed and it featured Lake Region’s own Tucker Broe who had a fantastic solo. The acapella ensemble was led by Dave Grossman who is the music director of Plymouth North High school. After the acapella group the full chorus took the stage including Lorelai Collins and Corbin Michaud of Lake Region. The chorus had what seemed to be more than 300 people and the program was sung beautifully with this number of people. The chorus was directed by Sophia Miller who is a conductor based in New York City. I felt that I had an amazing time at All states this year and that all of the performances sounded even better than last year.
