On Tuesday, March 11, many band students were missing from their classes in order to participate in the district band festival all day. The festival was held at Crescent Valley High School.

     The Concert Band, Symphonic Band, and Wind Ensemble each performed. The respective performances were split into three sections. “Each group’s time commitment is 90 minutes… We warm up for 30 minutes, perform for 30 minutes, and then afterwards we get a clinic from one of the judges for 30 minutes,” Band Director Brian McFadden said. In a clinic, the judge works with the band in a separate room to give them feedback.

     Since this was a festival rather than a competition, the bands weren’t ranked and didn’t compete against each other. “[We] go more for the clinic and for the experience, and so we still get scored, but we’re not ranked against other people… However, all the bands played really, really well,” McFadden said. “[The WAHS bands] got the highest scores of the year so far, super proud of them.”

     The bands are scored on a variety of factors, and if a judge scores a band 70 or higher out of 100, they qualify for state. “Technically, all three groups earned qualifying state scores, which is not super common,” McFadden said.