Westerville North High School students woke up bright and early on Feb. 24, 2024 to travel to Gahanna Lincoln High School for the State Orchestra competition. This competition sees competing orchestras perform their prepared pieces for a set of three music educators from other schools.
The panel will judge the performances using the Ohio Music Education Association (OMEA) adjudication sheet. This provides guidelines and criteria within four categories that each have different things to look for such as Intonation, tone quality, or rhythmic accuracy. Each is rated on a scale of I to V with I being a superior rating and V being the lowest rating.
Orchestra students have been preparing for State Orchestra since as early as the first month of school when they began working on the Peer Gynt suite composed by Edvard Grieg, they play two movements at State Orchestra. Mrs. Brosius, Westerville North High School’s orchestra director, has been working with orchestra students throughout the year to perfect their pieces.
“I don’t believe in rushing things, one of our pieces we learned at the fall concert, one of our pieces we learned at the holiday concert and then the third piece we started learning about December so that we had plenty of time to learn our music,” Brosius said. The orchestra also used sectionals and outside mentors to work with peers of the same instrument and also to get outside perspectives and advice.
Earning a superior rating is a great achievement and reflects highly of the students involved. “It reflects very positively that we got a superior rating. It reflects that we’re working very hard at Westerville North, the students are very talented and they are willing to put in the hard work to get where we need to be,” Brosius said.
This achievement is a great step for Westerville North. The orchestra has seen a lot of success in the past and continues to improve. Brosius hopes to take the concert orchestra group to the State Orchestra so they can compete as well as encourage students to continue to refine technical skills and practice other fundamentals outside of the classroom.
