RHS Students Impress at National Festival

Published March 15, 2016

The Ravenwood High School Wind Ensemble will perform next month at the Tennessee Music Education Association convention in Nashville. This comes weeks after the students gave an electrifying performance at the 2016 Music for All National Festival in Indianapolis.

“Performing on the national stage for over 1,000 attendees from the major universities as well as colleagues and their students was truly inspirational,” said Ravenwood High Band Director Mark Kinzer. “Our band received not one but three standing ovations and two curtain calls.”

In addition to their individual performance, Ravenwood High joined with Indiana’s Carmel High School to form the first ever United Sound Honors Ensemble. The United Sound program is designed to bring music instruction and performance to special needs students.

“The performance that evening was emotional and inspiring to everyone involved,” said Kinzer. “We performed for close to 3,000 people. I have people emailing and texting me from all over wanting me to help them set up a United Sound program at their school.”

Perhaps more than anything, Kinzer says he was beyond thrilled with how the students represented themselves and their school.

“After dinner on Thursday, the servers and staff came up to me – some with tears in their eyes,” said Kinzer. “One of them spoke on behalf of the others and said our students went out of their way to push up the chairs, clean up tables and thank each of them for serving the food. They said no one ever has stopped to thank them for serving. I told myself, forget the performance, we have accomplished our mission to create passionate and caring individuals.”