Festival

Friday, April 20th, saw me at the Willson school to attend the District festival. I watched the West Yellowstone school band, which was a mix of middle school and high school students, in about equal numbers. The band was under the conduction of miss Nancy McPherson, and for the 30 or so people in the band, they sounded pretty good. They played a piece I did not catch the name of, an arrangement of The 1812 Overture, and then sightread a piece I also did not catch the name of. The two rehearsed pieces sounded great, and there was a fantastic trumpet solo in the first piece. The sightreading went well, but as with most sightreading, it was sketchy in parts. They did have a couple moments where intonation was not the best, and a few tricky rhythm problems, but Ms. McPherson got everything back on track in an efficient manner.