Three Glens Falls student-musicians earned places in the extremely selective New York State Band Director’s Association (NYSBDA) 2021 Honors Ensembles! This year, senior Nick Teta (Trombone), junior Peyton Catarelli (Tenor Saxophone), and 8th grader Brady Gross (Alto Saxophone) represented Glens Falls in the re-vamped festival.
Typically, these elite student-musicians travel to Liverpool, NY for a weekend-long festival with concerts on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. But because of the ongoing pandemic, NYSBDA ran the festival virtually this year.
“That meant learning their music, attending four, 2-hour Zoom meetings with the conductors, rehearsing and taking workshops,” says music teacher Jeremy Bouteiller. “They then recorded their parts to be combined together with kids from across the state by an audio engineer,” Mr. Bouteiller continued.
This Saturday, the instrumentalists’ hard work will be showcased in a live-streamed concert. NYSBDA Honor Ensemble groups are extremely competitive to get into as they are state-wide groups, typically accepting fewer than 300 students. The student-musicians were selected based on their previous year’s NYSSMA scores and recommendation.
Bravo, musicians!