The Charleston High School Band has been selected to preform at the Arkansas Music Conference in Hot Spring on February 14th.
To be chosen as an All-State Honor Ensemble is a great honor, not only for a school and band director, but also for those students involved. Directors and administration must begin the process a year in advance. The band must submit unedited pieces of which one must be a march and the other selected from an approved list by ASBOA. Those recordings are then judged by out of state judges who score the recordings blindly and send them back. Bands submit and are chosen based on their classification. Last year bands in Classification AAAAA, AAA, EEEE, and EEE were able to submit applications to be chosen to perform at the All-State Music Conference. This is why it is such a big honor that one of our area high school bands was chosen to be an Honor Ensemble this year along with two area junior high bands.
Charleston High School is a 3A size band with 120 students in their 6th-12th-grade program. The Charleston Band has a long history of excellence. They have received superior ratings the past 9 years at Region Concert Assessment and earned the Sweepstakes Award. The band is under the direction of Jessica Holt, who is in her second year as the high school director. Before her time as high school director, she spent 8 years as the middle school director while working with the former high school director, Eric Durham. Joshua Uhrich is in his second year as the middle school director at Charleston. Both Jessica and Joshua enjoy working together with the 44 9th-12th grade students in the high school band.
I sat down with Jessica Holt to get an idea about what to expect from the Charleston Band. The pieces that they will be performing are traditional Charleston Band favorites:
Earl of Oxford’s March (From the William Byrd Suite), Simple Gifts: Four Shaker Songs by Frank Ticheli, and Arabian Dances by Brian Balmages.
Ms Holt told me that she chose these pieces because loves Renaissance and folk music. Holt and Uhrich also wanted to feature certain sections of the band in their concert. Each of these pieces features different sections of the band.
The Charleston band will perform a preview concert on February 7th at 7 pm at Charleston High School. They will then travel to Hot Springs to perform at the All-State Convention along with the Fort Smith Darby Junior High 9th grade band under the direction of Angie Clark, the Fort Smith Kimmons Junior High 8th grade band under the direction of Christopher Ha, and the Texarkana High School Band. The Darby and Kimmons bands will also perform a preview concert on February 12th at 7 pm at the Fort Smith Northside High School Auditorium.
Charleston will perform on February 14th at 8 am. We wish all of these bands the best of luck as they go and represent our area to the rest of the state. We are so proud of all the students and their hard work and dedication to perfect these challenging pieces. May your commitment to music show as you perform at All-State Convention.
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