Sisters band hosts festival

Sisters High School hosted over 750 students on April 14-15 for the Oregon Music Educators Association District Band Festival.

The event included 12 high school and 12 middle school bands from Sisters, Madras, Burns, Lakeview, Redmond and Bend.

This was the first year Sisters has hosted the annual event. Band director Jody Henderson reported that the event ran particularly smoothly due to the conducive layout of the facility, and an excellent staff of volunteers from the Cascade Horizons Band in Bend.

This local Horizons Band is one of hundreds organized nationally as the Horizons Music Program, which provides adults opportunities and entry points in music making.

The band festival utilized an educational format, in which each band performed for two adjudicators. Each adjudicator awarded points earned by bands in a scoring system reviewing three major categories: quality of sound; technical facility; and musicality. One adjudicator then worked with each band in a 30-minute workshop/clinic setting, offering feedback and advice to the students and directors.

The adjudicators were: Michael Burch-Pesses, from Pacific University; Steve Kuske, from Evergreen High School in Vancouver; Richard Elliot, from George Fox University; and Cindy Hutton, from Southern Oregon University.

While the festival format does not publicly rank or award individual bands, the event is a qualification opportunity for the OSAA Oregon State Music Championships. Schools earning high enough scores while performing music from a designated list are eligible for participation in the state competition.

During last week's event two bands reached this qualifying mark: 5A Summit High School and 4A Sisters High School. In the 5A and 4A divisions a maximum of only 12 bands statewide are invited to the OSAA Championships, and last year the 4A division was limited to just eight bands.

This will mark the 10th consecutive year in which Sisters High School has been one of those select programs. Over those 10 years, Sisters has finished in the top four places five different times at the state competition.

The Sisters Band will make the trip to this year's championship, held at OSU's LaSalle Auditorium, on the afternoon of May 13.