From the Bethel Public School Newsletter
Harper Stevenson from Bethel High School has been selected to perform in the All-Eastern Honors Mixed Choir.
The 2013 NAfME All-Eastern Honors Ensembles will perform at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, Hartford, CT, April 4-7, 2013. More than 780 of the most musically talented high school students in the Eastern region of the United States have been selected to perform in the 2013 NAfME All-Eastern Honors Ensembles.
With assistance from her music teacher, Karen Neville, Harper will prepare remarkably challenging music that she will perform under the leadership of a prominent conductor in this biennial event. Students will spend three days rehearsing with one of four conductors during the Eastern Division Conference of The National Association for Music Education to be held in Hartford, Connecticut in preparation for performances on April 7, 2013.
The NAfME All-Eastern Honors Ensembles, consisting of a concert band, symphony orchestra, mixed chorus, treble voice chorus, and jazz ensemble, are organized by members of The National Association for Music Education. The concert band and symphony orchestra will each have approximately one hundred fifty instrumentalists, the jazz ensemble will have twenty instrumentalists, the treble voice chorus will have one hundred twenty vocalists and the mixed chorus will have approximately three hundred fifty vocalists. Student participation from each state is determined by a percentage of the total NAfME Eastern Division membership, with no state given less than two percent representation.
Each of the state music educators’ associations in the Eastern Division (CT, DC, DE, MA, MD, ME, NH, NJ, NY, RI, PA, VT, Europe) oversee the selection process in their state during the spring and early fall of the year before the event and compile ranked lists of recommended juniors and seniors for consideration. The method used to compile the lists varies from state to state, although all recommended students must have participated in their home all-state festivals.
The committee builds the ensembles from the state presidents’ ranked lists, trying to mimic the state population percentages in each group. The Jazz Ensemble, due to its size and instrumentation, is formed to represent every state in the division.