Sixteen Freeport High School musicians auditions at the IEMA Districts festival in early November and now 10 students have qualified as All-State Musicians.
“My biggest takeaway is how different it is from playing at school, like there’s so many talented musicians and it’s such a different atmosphere and it’s such a cool feeling,” Alto Saxophone player Maddie Seal said.
“I tried out because I just wanted to improve my musical skills more than past years, and since I made it years before, I was kinda just like, ‘why not try again’,” Viola Bella Bird said.
The selected students went to Moline for the Orchestra Festival on Nov. 8, and the band and choir traveled to Dekalb on Nov. 14th.
“Districts is something that I’ve been doing to get a singing opportunity, to be part of a big choir with everyone who is kind of in our district is a really cool thing to be apart of. So just trying out and seeing if you make it in, is just an amazing opportunity,” Soprano Grace Beggin said.
“It’s really fun and you get to meet new people, and it’s really good to play with really good people,” Euphonium Mason Seal said.
They have worked hard on learning these challenging and high leveled pieces to prove their talents and musical skills.
“Both the pieces are very, very fast pieces, so it took me a lot of time to get them up to tempo and getting the articulation and making sure I was loud enough were very hard,” Upright Bass player Gretchen Rudolph said.
“Finding the time to practice it just cause I was so busy, but I made it work,” Soprano Keagan Huggins said.
The ten music students who qualified as an all-state musician are: sophomore Hudson Bauscher, sophomore Cainan Becker, senior Ava Chander, senior Angela Gautam, senior Tyler Houston, sophomore Wesley Loring, sophomore Myles Moore, sophomore Gretchen Rudolph, junior Madaline Seal, and freshman Marah Seals.
These students will patriciate in the All-State Music Festival in late January.
