On Saturday, dozens of PV students will gather at Davenport West, ready to perform several pieces, ranging from individual solos to instrument specific choirs conducted by a band director. This event occurs every year, and is something that music students at PV prepare for months in advance.
State Solo/Small Ensemble festival is an event that spans across band, orchestra, and choir, with students from every school in this area attending. Students can either perform a solo with a piano accompaniment, a piece of music in a group of up to 6 people, and/or in a larger group of students conducted by a director. These groups are instrument type specific, and are called “choirs”; for example, Mr. Anderson directs a woodwind choir, and Mr. Gartner directs the saxophone choir.
These students will play for several judges throughout the day, with each student having a completely different schedule.
Students rehearse their solos on their own time. But during the day, students must practice their pieces in a small group, and they must attend a choir practice, supervised by a band director.
“It’s a very chaotic experience, especially for the band directors, who have to plan everything. Choirs must rehearse during the day, and with most people in multiple events, including me, it takes a lot of time to create a schedule that fits all. More than once, I have had to miss lunch to practice, which can be difficult,” says sophomore Aadil Manazir.
This festival is sponsored and run by the Iowa High School Music Association (IHSMA). The IHSMA was started in October, 1920, when Superintendent G.T. Bennett, of Rockford, contacted many schools in Iowa, suggesting a state-wide music contest for the following spring. Dozens of schools responded, but the contest didn’t take place that year.
The following year, inspired by the positive feedback that Bennett received, Bennett sent out another message asking about any schools who were interested in participating in a state-wide music contest. This time, over 100 schools responded. In the fall of 1921, several school administrators met together and wrote a constitution, electing Bennett as the President of this new organization. Thus, the IHSMA (then titled the Iowa Musical Activities Association) and the first state music contest was born.
Since then, the IHSMA has been busy, with several hundred additions and changes to this organization, along with adding a marching band festival, an All-State music festival (the most rigorous and ubiquitous high school music festival in the state of Iowa), a jazz band festival, and a large group festival.
If you pass Davenport West on Saturday, make sure to stop by the gym and listen to a few of your fellow PV students hard at work, or stop by and listen to one of the choirs perform. It will truly be a great experience to listen to the final product of something that took weeks to perfect.
