The UW Department of Music is holding a series of the wind instrument concerts this week to encourage high school students to listen to good music and get a taste of how the professionals play.
Feb. 22-24 in the Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts concert hall the department of music’s jazz ensembles will be conducting the annual Festival of Winds.
The festival consists of three concerts – winds and percussions on Thursday, jazz on Friday and on Saturday there will be an honor band concert, played by the high school students, invited to UW from three states for the festival.
“The part of that is listening to good music,” Bryan Raya, associate director of bands and one of the conductors of the festival, said. “Sadly, some students are from the towns that might have not a lot of large ensembles to listen to. The only thing they are exposed to might be just their own high school band.”
The main aim of the festival is to give the high school students an opportunity to work with professional musicians.
“We bring high school students from the three-state area and give them opportunity to live a little bit of campus life, because we know, that once people come to UW, they love this place,” Robert Belser, director of bands and one the conductors of the festival, said. “We give them an opportunity to be around our wind and percussion faculty. It’s just multiple experiences and opportunities for the children that come to the event.”
Every year up to 140 high school children from three states – Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming – come to UW for three days to attend master classes and the rehearsals of UW bands and meet faculty of the department of music.
“There are about 65 students this year,” Belser said. “Every year we have kind of a little different mix and new schools, which is exciting. We are trying to make this mix better, as every year we are analyzing what was good and what needs to be improved. Each year we are doing it better and better.”
The high school students will have the chance to visit the rehearsals of wind and percussion orchestras and the jazz band on Thursday and Friday. The students will perform their own small concert on Saturday.
“Besides our concerts, we are putting on, we also put individual master classes,” Raya said. “For example, the flute players will come together, and they all will have flute class with our professors and get our instructions specifically to that instrument.”
Raya says that it’s a great opportunity for the faculty to audit and recruit new students to UW.
“Even the people who are playing at tomorrow night’s concert, probably, at least 25 percent applied, or are applying to UW,” Belser said. “I think as high as 40 percent of the students, who are studying here right now, came to UW as high school students for the festival.”
