Students from Emerson who were nominated for the North Jersey School Music Association (NJSMA) Honors Band played in a special festival. The students were sixth graders Aaron SooHoo and Oliver Stutzel and fifth grader Norah Smith. Carter Ostroff, another fifth grader, was nominated for the NJSMA Honors Band but could not attend the festival.
SooHoo, Stutzel, and Smith traveled with their parents to Mount Olive High School, in Mount Olive, New Jersey, where they rehearsed with other honors band students in North Jersey in the morning and performed songs in front of a large audience in the afternoon. Songs included classical pieces such as The Thunderer, Presto!, a very catchy Just Dance by Lady Gaga, and the world famous Star Wars theme song. One of the band directors chose the Star Wars theme song because the festival was held on May 4th this year which coincided with the famous Star Wars phrase “May the fourth be with you.”
“It was really fun [to perform] and also to play my instrument for a long time that day,” Stutzel said.
The sixth graders performed in two bands – The Green Band and Blue Band. They played five pieces each. The fifth graders performed in the Yellow Band and played four pieces.
SooHoo was nominated for the NJSMA Honors Band last year as a fifth grader. It was very nice for SooHoo to see some familiar faces from the year before and get the opportunity to rehearse and play more challenging pieces.
“I really wish there were more opportunities like this,” Joseph Gibbs said. He is the band instructor at Patrick M. Villano School. “It went really well, and I hope we can do this again for many more years.”
Gibbs participated as a volunteer chaperoning a group of the students at the festival. Gibbs said he might use one of the Green Band’s songs, Fires of Mazama, for his own band students to learn and perform at school concerts in the future.
Next school year when SooHoo and Stutzel are in seventh grade, they may choose to audition for the Music Educators of Bergen County (MEBCI) Honors Band. Next year as sixth graders, Smith and Ostroff will have another chance to be nominated for the NJSMA Honors Band.
