The Manchester Enterprise
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Community to host band festival
Twelve school bands will perform for judges at Manchester High
By Alana West, Special Writer
PUBLISHED: March 8, 2007
A dozen bands from neighboring school districts will perform Friday at the Manchester High School auditorium as part of the first band festival the community has ever hosted.
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Each band is looking to receive a superior rating in performance and sight-reading ability. Each will learn more about what it already does well, as well as areas needing improvement.
"Everybody has the opportunity to get any rating. They are not in competition with each other," said Ed Schoendorff, middle school band director for Manchester.
Schoendorff and Jared Throneberry, the Manchester High School band director, helped bring the Michigan School Band and Orchestra District VIII Band Festival to Manchester and have been preparing for the other bands' arrival.
"It's a huge undertaking," Throneberry said.
Some classrooms are assigned for instrument storage, others for evaluations or warm-ups. The commons area will be open for visitors to purchase meals and snacks.
Throneberry said having a new high school made it possible for Manchester to host the festival.
"This is a direct result of the new building ... It's nice to be able to show off this new facility," Throneberry said.
When plans for the new school were being drawn up in 2002, both band directors were already thinking about how best to host a festival within the facility.
They helped with planning the area surrounding the auditorium so that there would be an easy way to get from place to place with heavy instruments.
"We want it to be as smooth as possible," Throneberry said. "We don't want them to have to think about how they will get their equipment off the truck and through the door."
The 12 bands will be primarily middle school bands, with Manchester as the only high school band performing. This is because the scheduled Michigan Merit Exam coincides with the day usually scheduled for the festival.
For the first time, the festival will been offered during two weekends to allow band members to take their exam and also perform.
"There are many sites for this weekend (across the state)," Throneberry said.
Throneberry and Schoendorff wrote to state band festival coordinators, asking that Manchester be considered as a site.
"We have several dozen volunteers coming in. It takes a lot of people to run this and do it effectively," Throne-berry said.
The bands will not compete with each other for their ratings, but instead will be evaluated by a panel of three judges on their performance of three pieces: a march, a piece taken from a state-required list and one of their own choosing.
"There are two philosophies in this. Some groups play the easiest music … and start practicing in September," Schoendorff said. "In Manchester, we pick music over our classification. We're playing music Chelsea might play because they are a larger school district. We push kids as hard as they can for a learning experience."
The bands also are evaluated on their sight-reading ability in which the bands and their directors will have seven minutes to practice a piece they have not seen before, and then perform for another panel of judges.
"(Band festival) is an important experience to go through. The students get a real sense of teamwork. Throneberry said.
Schoendorff added, "Every person in the room is trying to achieve the goal of their best performance … in front of an audience."
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