Outside of room 89, the HHS band room, posters for honor bands, scholarship information, and performance opportunities alike hang on the band bulletin board.
Nine HHS band students were accepted into college honor bands, which occur over one or multiple days between mid-January and mid-February. According to HHS Band Director Troy Ehmke, nine isn’t an unusual number of students to make honor bands each year since around eight to ten HHS band students make an honor band each year.
Auditions for college honor bands normally take place in early December. Various colleges throughout the state host honor bands every year to help high school students grow as musicians and to give them the opportunity to perform in a large group with other high school instrumentalists.
“I wanted to be in (an honor band) just because it’s a fun thing to do,” senior flute and piccolo player Justine Bierman said. “I get out of school for a bit as well. Going to them, you get to make new friends, you get to learn from people who aren’t your director. So it’s different information, or, it’s the same information just in a different way.”
Bierman wasn’t surprised when she made the Hastings College and UNK Honor Bands this year since she has been in both honor bands before. Many honor bands keep their auditions the same from year to year.
“I’ve been in (honor bands) before, but my first one, I was kind of shocked. I was like, I didn’t think I did very well on my audition, but ever since then, it’s like I expect to get into them because I’ve done the same (honor bands) for maybe two or three years. So if I don’t get into them I wonder what I did differently because I’ve used the same audition music for the past three years,” Bierman said.
When deciding which honor band to audition for, many students consider what they have to do for the audition, if they might want to attend college there in the future, and how long the honor band lasts.
“I did Hastings College because it’s close. All you have to do for your audition is a small piece of selected music that you choose and then a scale, but last year I did UNK’s and they gave you the music, so you’ve got that, so it was easier to audition for,” Bierman said. “And where those ones are day honor bands where some of the other ones are like two days, and I don’t really want to go for two days, It’s just like a one and done… But Hastings College is two days, but (the second day) is like half of a day. I think you went at four o’clock and then you got done at like nine.”
To audition for honor bands, students record a video of their audition to submit with all of the elements that are required for that honor band’s audition. Bierman has used her 2022 All-State music for all of her Hastings College honor band auditions.
“I just go over (my All-State music) and then I just play it over and over again. And then it normally takes me like two or three hours to record because I mess up a lot which is something that I like about honor bands. After all, you can do as many takes as you want until you have the perfect one. It’s like an all-day thing for me,” Bierman said.
Each honor band has a designated number of slots for each instrument, so if there are a lot of students in the state who are playing the same instrument, or a small number of slots for a specific instrument, it can make getting into an honor band with a certain instrument more competitive.
“Depending on the instrument itself, also you look at how many students in the state are playing a certain instrument,” Emke said. “If you go to All-State auditions or All-State band and you make it on flute, that’s pretty big, because there’s a lot of flute players out there. If you also then look at the spots and go for, let’s say tenor saxophone, they only take four tenor saxophones, and there are plenty, we’re talking 20, 30, more than that, but going for four spots. So the fact that we even get students into that band is amazing. And the fact that we had a tenor sax player for the last two years is incredible as well,” Emke said.
Junior tenor saxophone player Blake Schiffbauer has also participated in honor bands before, but his motivation for auditioning for an honor band this year was reaching his goal of being in the 200-point club as a junior.
“I want to get letter points. Like, there’s this thing called the 200-point club. And I’m really close as a junior being able to be in that 200-point club,” Schiffbauer said. “So I wanted to audition to get the letter points, and also just because honor bands are fun, and it’s usually more challenging music than we play in our band class, so it satisfies that.”
Something Schiffbauer enjoys about being in an honor band is hearing the full band rehearse together for the first time.
“I will say one of my favorite things about honor bands is that initial, like the first time you play together because you only ever hear a single part…,” Schiffbauer said. “It was still a wonderful thing to just hear everything come together for the first time. But it’s really cool because you take this part and you’ve only heard this one part and you might feel like it’s just kind of there in some of the like quarter notes, half notes, whole notes, parts of it will seem just boring and flat. But then you get into this big group and you hear how you all play it together… And you can hear the chords and stuff for the first time and hear the sections and how the full piece is supposed to sound, and that’s just exciting. It’s just fun to hear that stuff and hear music coming together.”
Both Schiffbauer and Bierman would agree that one of the best parts of honor bands is meeting new people and making friends with people who have similar interests.
“So like I think it’s really important if you’re able to go you should go because you get to go learn new things, you get to meet new people,” Bierman said. “I’m friends with a lot of people I’ve met, so it’s like people with similar interests as you so it’s fun, and it’s not like a chore like oh, I don’t like being in band, so I don’t like being here, but you enjoy them. You’re good enough to get into them, and (the experience of being in honor bands is) something that I’m going to take with me into college.”
Beirman has also been opened up to opportunities for her future through honor bands.
“I would say the things that you learn and then the people that you meet as well (are the long-lasting impacts of honor bands). I’ve had some people like adults talk to me about scholarship opportunities to go to their college or different outlets that I could take if I wanted to still take my athletic training career but also wanted to do music, so that was something that is (impactful),” Bierman said.
The most gratifying part of students making honor bands to Emke is seeing them realize that the work they put into making an honor band paid off.
“(I’m) very excited because these students take their own time to push themselves again in different directions, at different levels. So the fact that then they see growth and they get that they earned that spot. I’m very excited and very proud of them as an individual,” Emke said.
