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Music Notes – September 2015-6476

Published September 25, 2015

The Centennial High/Woodland Middle Combined Orchestra has been selected to perform at the National Association for Music Educators National Conference (NAfME). The orchestra will be performing as a lab ensemble for nationally recognized clinicians’ workshops. The NAfME National Conference takes place October 25-27 in Nashville. This orchestra is under the direction of Allison Cowan.

The Ravenwood High Wind Ensemble will also perform at the National Association for Music Educators National Conference October 25-27.

The wind ensemble has been chosen to perform as a featured band at the National Concert Band Festival. The festival is part of the 2016 Music for All National Festival, presented by Yamaha. The ensemble was chosen by a panel of evaluators and invited to attend the festival in August. The Music for All Festival National Fesival will take place in Indianapolis March 9-12, 2016. The RHS wind ensemble is under the direction of Mark Kinzer.

Additionally, the Franklin High and Ravenwood High school bands recently participated in the Bands of America Regional Championships in Clarksville on September 19. Overall all, FHS finished third and RHS finished tenth. FHS also won an award for outstanding musical performance. In preliminaries, FHS finished first place in Class AAA and won Class AAA outstanding visual performance. The FHS band is under the direction of David Aydelott, and the RHS band is under the direction of Mark Kinzer.

The Centennial Octet performed as the closing entertainment at the 2015-16 TDOT/Keep Tennessee Beautiful Biennial Conference in Cool Springs on September 15 and 16.

This year marks the first time Brentwood Middle, Grassland Middle and Heritage Middle schools have an orchestra program. The strings program offers instrumental instruction for sixth and eighth grade students. Students will learn the basics of how to play violin, viola, cello, or double bass. They will learn to read music and develop musicianship in a group setting. Each class is geared towards all level of students whether they have previous experience or not.

Ravenwood High School is the first high school in Tennessee to pilot a new program that pairs top performing band students with students in the special education program. The club is called United Sound, and the goal is for the band students to mentor the new musicians as they learn how to read music, play an instrument and perform as a group. RHS Band Director Mark Kinzer is helping with the pilot program. The new musicians will be full members of the band and will perform with them in at least two concerts this school year with their first concert December 10.

Heritage Middle has an upcoming choir concert on September 28 at Thompson Station Church. The concerts starts at 6:30 p.m. Thompson Station Church is located at 2604 Thompson Station Road East in Thompson’s Station.