ASHLAND — The Ashland High School Symphonic Band made history during its trip to state competition last weekend.
The Arrows received a Superior rating for the first time in 21 years.
Each year, the Ohio Music Education Association hosts various competitions around the state seeking the most talented musicians at the student level. OMEA is the governing body for music education throughout Ohio. Each state has a similar program that feeds into a national entity.
The Ashland High School contingent triumphed at the district level to reach state competition, where it mirrored that success.
“Each district holds a district contest that bands and choirs can perform at and if you score high enough, you get to move onto the state finals” said Martin Kral, Ashland High School Band Director. “You have to play three songs and one of those comes off of a list that OMEA generates.”
Each band has to pick a song from a list of six to eight tunes that OMEA sends out to each competing high school. The individual band can then pick the other two songs, often trying to match the quality and difficulty of the songs from the OMEA list.
High school bands rehearse these audition pieces for weeks and then travel to a centralized location for the competition.
“Three judges rate your performance” Kral said. “They can give you a one, which is a superior rating, all the way down to a five.
“Then you go and sight read for a fourth judge, which literally means they hand you a piece of music you’ve never seen before and you have to play it for them.”
Bands get a couple minutes to look over the music, noting certain aspects of it. However, they do not get to play it at all until the actual audition. This helps the judges to observe whether or not the students actually have the ability to play high caliber music and weren’t just hammering away at the pieces they already received for the audition.
The final rating is completely based on how the group performs as a whole and not on an individual basis.
There were 65 students involved in Ashland High School’s Symphonic band. They all competed on April 27 at Glenoak High School in Canton, the same weekend as Ashland High School’s prom.
The last time the band has scored a superior rating at the state level competition was in the 1997-98 school year. It is only the third time Ashland High School’s Symphonic Band received that rating.
