Central Region Orchestra is an Orchestra festival where District 7 and 8 students must first qualify at District Orchestra by being seated before a certain number to demonstrate exemplary musical performance. After qualifying for Region Orchestra, students were given a little over a month to prepare their music with their respective parts for the festival.  

During the festival, which was held from Feb. 20-22, students rehearsed their music with their conductor, while being given breaks in between. The students practiced for the first two days, having their seating audition on the first day. During the seating audition, students are told the sections of music they will need to play before their music is collected and they are allowed to mark it in their parts—their music is then given back to them once they are in the audition room and they play for two judges. They are then ranked according to certain categories such as tone, style, etc. They played a concert on Sat., Feb. 22, to end the festival. 

One participant, Madelyn Schwanger, said, “It was a really fun experience playing with kids from other schools and meeting new people and it was fun playing professional-level music with high school students!”

Our participants included Colton Taylor, Madelyn Schwanger, Howard Chen, Robert Leiter, Elizabeth Radspinner, Wyatt Trythall, Ashley Derr, William Ciabattari, Kaleb Kelly. All in all, the festival appears to have been a success!