Wayne State College will be hosting 250 students in the Festival of Honor Bands on Saturday, January 27.
This festival consists of three bands for students to get into, including the Wind Ensemble, Symphonic Band and the Jr. High Band. The Jr. High Band will be directed by Randy Neuharth, the symphonic band by Todd Cook and the Wind Ensemble by WSC instructor Michael Genslinger. The music will feature various pieces such as music from the Mandalorian, Celebration and Song by Robert Sheldon, Skygazer Fanfare by Randall Standridge, and Zombie Tango by James Meredith.
To be accepted into honor band, students have to play a short piece of music found on the WSC website, as well as some scales, and submit them to the college in November. The music faculty will then listen to these auditions and select the students based on their performance. This year, the college had about 400 auditions. The selected students work on their music from 8:30 a.m. until their performances later that day. They have a break for lunch, after which they get to watch a small performance from the Wayne State Wind Ensemble featuring Professor Karl Kolbeck at 12:30 p.m. in Ramsey Theatre.
The music faculty look forward to this event because it is a chance to meet various students from a lot of different schools.
“It’s also kind of a big recruiting deal for us, you know, because we get students on campus, we get to have them work with the faculty here,” Josh Calkin said, director of bands at WSC. “They get to see the building and perform in the theatre.”
The staff is doing something different for high school seniors who are interested in attending Wayne. Seniors are able to take their honor band auditions and use them toward a different music audition for a Wayne State scholarship.
“It’s a kind of added recruiting tool and there’s going to be an opportunity for seniors to meet with Josh and some other faculty, for them to actually do a scholarship application and say, ‘Hey, I want my audition to count towards that scholarship audition’ so that they don’t have to come back here later on this semester,” Michael Genslinger said. Students are able to showcase their talent early on without the worry of putting something together later.