Sewickley Student Chosen to Perform at NAfME All-Eastern Honors Ensembles this Spring

More than 810 of the most musically talented high school students in the Eastern region of the United States have been selected to perform in the 2015 NAfME All-Eastern Honors Ensembles. One such student from Sewickley Academy, Janelle Sands, will attend accompanied by her music teacher Gino Faraci. Ms. Sand’s exceptional performances and talent with her cello have ranked her among the top student musicians of whom she will be joining in the Orchestra.

The students will prepare remarkably challenging music that they will perform under the leadership of prominent conductors in this biennial event, having an allotted time of three days to rehearse with one of five conductors. Their performances, taking place on April 11 and April 12 of 2015, will represent the standards of the Eastern Division Conference of the National Association for Music Education. 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 association.

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 on 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 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 committee builds the ensembles from the state presidents’ ranked lists, trying to mimic the state population percentages in each group.

The 2015 NAfME All-Eastern Honors Jazz Ensemble will perform on Saturday, April 11, 2015 at the Rhode Island Convention Center. The 2015 NAfME All-Eastern Honors Treble Voice Chorus and Mixed Chorus will perform for an audience of thousands on Sunday, April 12, 2015, at 11:00 AM and the Band and Orchestra on April 12, 2015 at 1:00 PM. Both concerts will be at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium, Providence, Rhode Island.