Middle school, high school music students perform

Music students at Thermopolis Middle School and Hot Springs County High School have been busily preparing for a pair of concerts for this spring.

The middle school will be having a Spring Fling Showcase on Tuesday, April 10 at 7 p.m., featuring performances by the fifth grade band, sixth grade band, the mixed seventh and eighth grade band and the seventh and eighth grade mixed choir.

“The fifth and sixth grade bands have been working hard on their skill development and have prepared songs that focus on skills we have been working on in the classroom,” said music director Drew Brown. “The seventh and eighth grade band have three selections they have worked extremely hard on. These pieces will display different skills whin the various sections of the ensemble.

“The seventh and eighth grade choir have prepared three fairly modern selections that demonstrate various vocal techniqes as well as give students an opportunity to sing in harmony.”

High school musicians have been preparing for their upcoming festival and will be performing their pieces at the pre-festival concert on Thursday, April 12. Solos and small ensembles will perform beginning at 6:30 p.m. and large ensembles will begin around 7:30 p.m.

The pre-festival concert will feature the concert band, Jazz Cats, concert choir and modern performance choir along with the solos and ensembles.

The concert band will present Gustav Holst’s ‘Second Suite in F’, ‘Carnival of the Animals’, arranged by James Curnow and ‘Thunderbolt’, written by Johnnie Vinson.

“It has been a pleasure teaching the students to play ‘Carnival of the Animals’,” Brown said. “This arrangement features four short movements and utilizes all of the different sections withing the concert band ensemble.

“’Thunderbolt’ is a beautiful tribute to the WWII airplanes and does a wonderful job scoring for the different sections in the band, passing around melodies and harmonic motifs.”

Brown added the concert choir is doing three of his personal favorites for the evening, ‘My Lord, what a mornin,’’ ‘Pie Jesu’ and ‘All My Trials’. The concert choir will be joined by the modern performance students for this concert and the District Festival.

The modern performance group will be doing a pair of jazz standards, ‘Fascinating Rhythm’ by the Gershwin brothers and ‘Take Five’, arranged by Kirby Shaw. They will be joined by the rhythm section of the jazz band.

No concert would be complete without a couple of pieces from the Jazz Cats, and since their performance at the Northwest College Jazz Festival they have been working hard to bring you Herbie Hancock’s ‘Cantaloupe Island’, and the jazz standard, ‘All of Me’.

Brown said senior Shay Skar will be doing vocals for ‘All of Me’.

The District Music Festival will take place on Friday and Saturday, April 20 and 21 in Worland. Large ensembles will perform on Friday and solos and small ensembles will be heard the 21st.

As always, the concerts will be held in the auditorium and are free to the public.