Humans of Metea: All-State Musicians

What ensemble were you in? Honors Orchestra on string bass. What was your favorite part of the weekend? Hanging out in the hotel. Did you meet a lot of new people? Yeah, a few, but I feel like we could have met more. There were some cool bass players. What was the audition process like? We did not know what excerpts they were going to choose until that morning, but we went to the...

What ensemble were you in? I was in Honors Orchestra. What was your favorite part of the weekend? The final performance. What pieces did you play? We played “1812 Overture” by Tchaikovsky and the second movement to Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10.  Did you meet a lot of people? We met a couple of people from our orchestra. What was the audition process like? Everyone feels ne...

What ensemble were you in? I played principal bassoon in the All-State Band. What pieces did you play? I played “El Camino Real”, “Dusk”, “Circus Beats and March”, and “Zing”. What was your favorite part of the weekend? We drove down Wednesday night and did not have any events until Thursday morning, so all of the girls chilled in one of our hotel rooms for a few hours pl...

What did you participate in? I was part of the FMES program What is the FMES program? FMES stands for Future Music Educators Seminar. You basically go to class for 14 hours. You also get to choose from 100 different sessions with different speakers. I went to conducting ones, some about band, but there is also orchestra, music theory, and stuff like that. You take a bunch of notes. You als...

What ensemble did you perform in? I was in the All-State Choir. I was a Tenor I. What was the weekend like? All the All-State people took a trip to the city of Peoria. We stayed at this hotel and had rehearsals throughout the day. Occasionally we had about a four-hour break to roam the city and do whatever we wanted. On the final day, we all performed at the All-State concert.  What w...

What ensemble were you in? I was in Honors Orchestra on trumpet. I had to audition on Thursday, and I made third chair. What was the audition process like? It was really weird because I had to go up an elevator for every audition room. They were in hotel rooms, but it was still blind so that part of it was normal. I had all the experts prepared, but they only chose two of them for me to pe...

What ensemble were you in? I was in the All-State Choir. What songs did you sing? Our concert had six pieces. Four of them were mixed. One was an all guys piece, and one was an all girls piece.  What was the weekend like? It was awesome. We had so much fun. I was hanging out with Akhil and Dylan, but the rehearsals were also so much fun. The director was awesome. He was from the Uni...

What ensemble were you in? I played third trombone in the Honors Jazz Band. What pieces did you play? We played “Low-Down”, “Run For Your Life”, “Out the Window” which our director Adam Larson composed, and “Shanghai”.  What was your favorite part of the weekend? I got to work with my directors for almost two full days. Adam Larson was really chill and taught every sin...