This Saturday, the Emporia Highschool’s orchestra, band, and choir will be competing at Manhattan High School for KSHSAA Regional Solos and Ensembles. Emporia High’s music teachers Riley Day (orchestra), Glenn Woolard (band), and Sarah Bays (choir) have been preparing their students this past semester for this weekend in hopes to score well and make it to the State competition.

“My primary goal is to instill the importance of these invaluable life lessons… Hard work achieves results. The harder you work, the more you’ll gain from the experience. Hard work triumphs over talent every single time!” Day said.

In order to prepare their students for this competition, the music teachers held a concert where students could practice performing their competition pieces. Pieces ranging from Mozart to modern artists were performed in the auditorium and orchestra room.

“We created a contest prep packet for all of our soloists that has been a huge help in keeping them on task for preparing since January. This included practice logs, scheduled meetings with their accompanist, research into their composer, and even some practice introducing their piece like they have to do at contest,” Woolard said.

In addition to all of the hard work and dedication from the teachers, students put in their fair share of practive and rigorously rehearsed in preparation for this Saturday. One student from the Black Orchestra class, Natalie Denton (11) will be performing both a solo as well as an ensemble piece for the competition.

“I have been practicing with my accompanists and fellow ensemble members as well as on my own time for the past couple of months-my primary goal is to make it to state with at least one of my ensembles or solo performances,” Denton said.

The music department has been busy at work in preparation for Regional competition and will continue their efforts for state competition the following weekend. Good luck music students!